Who'll Come A Waltzin' Matilda with Me?

"C'est la Vie," Say the Old Folks

2011-06-12T11:16:00.001-07:00

We bought a souped-up Hyundai, it was a cherry red GLE. Drove it down to Bisbee to celebrate the anniversary.

Steve and I met 20 years ago this month, and we decided that milestone deserves a celebration. We stayed at the beautiful vacation home of our friend Cynthia. She bought her sweet vintage home high on the hill overlooking Old Bisbee 33 years ago, before anyone knew that Bisbee would become such an artsy community. She was in Bisbee when Bisbee wasn't cool.

We had three days of being tourists. We checked out the Shady Dell airstream trailer court and diner,

and took the Copper Queen Mine tour.

We looked in galleries, were awed by the stained glass at St Patrick's and admired the art deco Cochise County Superior Court Building. Ate no fewer than three delicious meals at High Desert Market and Cafe on Tombstone Canyon, and had some good Mexican chow at Santiago's in Brewery Gulch. Cynthia proudly gave us a tour of the impressive Copper Queen Hospital where she works.

Believe it or not, list prices of small historic homes are higher in Bisbee than they are in Tucson. However, the amazing 10,615 square foot, 11 bedroom, 9 bathroom Loma Linda mansion in Warren can be had for only $672,000. Designed by the architect Henry Trost, it was built for a mine executive in 1907, and was known as a rock star party house in the 70s. Many of the homes in Bisbee were demolished when the Lavender Pit opened, and Loma Linda lost its extensive orchards. You will have to overlook the towering mine tailings that now come almost up to the back porch, but it's a steal, marked down from its 2007 list price of $2,000,000.

C'est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.

Wupatki

2010-05-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last month, Steve and I spent a few nights in Sedona with our pals Lance and Margo. We checked out three ruins: the pueblos at Tuzigoot and Wupatki, and the cliff dwelling at Montezuma's Castle.

We were especially fascinated by a blow hole at Wupatki. When the air temperature or pressure is lower above ground than below, air blows out of a hole in the ground at a pretty fast clip. The hole can also inhale when the conditions are reversed. Steve and I couldn't get enough of watching our hats fly away.

Almost Autumn Back East

2009-10-13T08:57:00.000-07:00

After spending a few days with my family in Massachusetts, Steve and I went to Washington, DC to see a dear friend who has just moved there. She has a wonderful apartment in a great old Beaux Arts building a great neighborhood with an amazing variety of splendid restaurants and stores are all within a block or two.

Friday she took us for a delicious meal at a Peruvian restaurant. The mango picso sour drink was tasty and potent. We all had beautifully presented fish, and dispensed with any dessert selection dilemma by sharing the three that sounded most appealing. It was a fantastic beginning to our DC adventure.

Saturday we drove to Annapolis and walked around the town. Unfortunately, a boat show was monopolizing the docks, so we couldn’t see any sail boats or the harbor. Much has changed since I made regular visits to Annapolis when I lived in Baltimore 19 years ago. Gone is Pendragon Gallery, but the country’s oldest State House is still majestic and the eighteenth century streets remind us we’re nowhere near Tucson.

Steve and me in Annapolis

Sunday we took the Metro to visit Steve’s friends Bill and Cheryl in Bethesda, a peaceful suburb just over the Maryland line.

After a terrific Indian meal, Steve and I started walking around looking for some live music. We didn’t find anything we wanted to hear, and kept walking until we were at the White House. I’d never seen it before, so I enjoyed that. For some reason, there’s a huge tent on the south lawn, ruining any photo ops.

The Washington Monument lured us to the Mall, where we saw another huge tent in front of the Capitol. The Lincoln Memorial was lit up at the west end of the Mall, so we headed in that direction. We read the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which are engraved on the marble walls, and marveled at Lincoln’s powerful writing and the tremendous task he had of trying to reunite a country that was violently torn apart. Unlike the administration that started our current wars, he seemed to understand that war is a horrible monstrosity.

On Monday we finally got our bike ride in Rock Creek Park. Fortunately, many of the roads in the park are closed to traffic on Sundays and holidays, so thanks to Columbus, we enjoyed a car-free ride. It was a little cooler today, and the clouds prevented us from getting the best photos, but we did manage to find some leaves that were changing.

Cabin in Rock Creek Park.
One of the many alluring restaurants in DC is an Egyptian restaurant that had a great sampler: spicy fava beans, hummus, babaghanooj, the best moussaka ever, beet salad, garden salad, falafel, taboulli, spinach pie, grape leaves and pita for $8.95. So cheap we had to have baklava, too.

Prior to our DC adventure, we flew into Boston for a visit with my family. I persuaded Steve to stop for dinner in Boston. We parked at the Prudential Center, next to the Sheraton, and I realized this is where Ray Charles used to stay when he was in Boston. My sister was friends with him for years, and used to ride her motorcycle into the Sheraton garage when she visited him. Ray would then drive her motorcycle out of this very garage, dumbfounding all onlookers.

We wandered around Copley Square until we found Joe's American Bar and Grill and had a pretty good dinner. The mahogany pillars and plush old dining room reminded us we're not in Tucson anymore. The $35 we paid for two hours' parking wiped away any remaining delusions that we were home.

We visited my mother, who is adjusting much more easily than anyone expected to a safer, healthier and more social life in a nursing home. She was more alert and animated than I have seen her in years. We drove up to New Hampshire to see my brother-in-law Sam and my sister Bev, who was in day three of recovery from double knee replacement surgery. She was miserable, but really appreciated our visit, and is glad the surgery is over and she can now get on with her life.

We got the best family news when we took my brother Keith and his wife Fay to a lovely restaurant in a colonial house in Pomfret, Connecticut, their home town for the past ten years or more. Before dinner and after everyone had their wine or beer, Keith announced that he had just that day received the news that he has a new job. His three week job hunt was probably the shortest in recent history, but his success surprised no one. Still, it was such a treat to celebrate with them, so we had a bottle of champagne. And more amazing desserts.

Keith and Fay own a twenty year old house that looks like a much older farm house. They were surprised to hear that a tiny white-tailed deer bounded across their long drive way in front of us, and we saw his buddy staring at us from the woods. We used to see deer tip toeing through their wooded yard, which borders a state preserve, but they haven’t seen any deer for years.

We also got a chance to watch the antics of their five new kittens. Keith and Fay disagree about the number of cats they currently have. One says 17, the other says 19.

Now we’re flying home to Tucson. Much as I love Southwest Airlines, if you don’t have a computer and printer so you can print your boarding pass a day before flight, you will not be in a good position to board. We were the last two on the plane, and we’re not sitting next to each other. I am in the middle next to a big guy who is spilling into my seat, and Steve is next to a squalling baby.

Addendum: as it turns out, the baby’s mom is lucky Steve sat next to them instead of me. Steve says 18-month-old Ben kept him entertained through the whole flight. When Ben tried to charge off the plane without his mother, Steve scooped him up and held him until his mother had collected all the baby gear.

When we picked up our car at the most expensive lot at Tucson International (the new one with covered parking), our bill for eight days was $9 more than we paid for two hours in Boston. It's great to be home.

Frog Heaven

2009-07-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

A few years ago my child hood friend Louellyn and her husband Ramiro bought a cabin on College Pond in Myles Standish State Forest near Plymouth, Massachusetts. Louellyn spends every possible minute there until the snow gets too deep for them to get to the cabin. She and Ramiro believe no one could ever need anything more than to drift in kayaks in the middle of the pond.

Louellyn has been raving about this transforming refuge and its dragonflies, turtles, birds and frogs for so long, she finally managed to persuade some of her high school friends to gather at Frog Heaven in June. Pat, Jane, Lynda and I joined Louellyn and Jane's ex sister-in-law Ora and sometimes Ramiro for a few lovely days of non-stop eating and catching up.

Massachusetts is experiencing The Year Without a Summer. We spent much of the first day I was there sitting on the porch watching the rain, which was relaxing and uplifting. All those negative ions always raise the spirits of this desert rat. A family of Canada Geese complete with five fuzzy grey half size goslings came by daily. Orioles and hummingbirds also made appearances, along with a rather alarming neon orange slug that came from under the porch.

I paddled around the perimeter of the pond early one morning by myself. Forty four cabins each have their own style and siting. Louellyn has been told that her 600 square foot cabin was the ice house for the main cabin next door. I decided Louellyn and Ramiro have the best sandy beach.

Louellyn knows at least one person in 40 of the 44 houses. It's easy to meet the neighbors. One man paddled by in his canoe and was invited to join us. He came up to the porch and had a drink. He spends his summers living on the pond and taking tourists out in the ocean for whale watches and fishing. In the winter, he does scallop research, I think in South America. I was delighted that he was able to answer a question that has baffled me since we had delicious scallops in New Zealand last year (see Same Days, Different Island). What's that beautiful crescent that tastes and looks like lobster and is hugging the scallop? Turns out, it's the scallop's gonads. If squeamishness over certain body parts is the only thing stopping Americans from knowing about the best part of the scallop, they ought to get over it.

Louellyn revels in the pond community and the fascinating people who share her love for it. They freely visit each other to share coffee, laughs and songs.

Motorized boats are not permitted on the pond, and no one will ever be allowed to install an indoor bathroom. A short hike up the pine needle path to the outhouse is part of the cabin's charm. I think the lack of a bathroom has the additional benefit of self-selecting a community that loves nature and rejects the nasty things that humans do to our world.

The frog pond behind the house is filled with reptilian singers of every range from deep croaks to whistles and peeps. It's quite mesmerizing.

Louellyn has set an admirable goal for the summer. She plans to try a different ice cream every day at Erickson's ice cream stand until she has tried all 44. Then she will allow herself to repeat. Such strenuous discipline is hard to maintain in such a tranquil place, but I've known Louellyn all my life and I am confident that she is up to the challenge. She proudly read us her ice cream diary, which starts with Memorial Day weekend. I got Maine Bear Berry one day and something with Oreo cookies the next. I would have a hard time ordering a sherbet or anything without chocolate, but apparently Louellyn is not similarly handicapped.

The Queen of Frog Heaven

After all the others had left, Louellyn and I took the kayaks out to the middle of the pond to have some time alone for the first time in many years. It was a calm, warm day and a turtle poked his nose above the water to check us out.

Now I want to lure these girls to Desert's Edge so they can see my version of paradise.

Margaritaville

2009-05-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

"It's Sunday," Tracey suggested.
"Too much information," I retorted.
She apologized: "I guess you don't want to know what time it is."
Me: "Now you get it".

Sadie on the front porch of 907 White Street

We flopped into plastic Adirondack chairs close to the pier in the Key West marina to consider our strategy. We were sun burnt and brain dead after three hours of dolphin watching and snorkeling in the Gulf of Mexico. We went to Waterfront Market and marveled at all the exotic fish, spices and sounds. We got some salmon, rice and strawberries and headed back to 907 White Street, our home away from home.

And what a delightful home it is. We are renting a one bedroom apartment that takes up the whole first floor of a conch house. Tracey informed me a conch house has 1) a porch across the front. Check. 2) a tin roof. Check and 3) interior walls off exposed Dade County pine. Check. With wooden floors, granite counters in the kitchen and bath, lots of tile, high ceilings, and a private hot tub on the back porch, ours is pretty deluxe. A beautiful traveler's palm dominates the lush back yard. Geckos and lizards squiggle in the rustling trees.

Key West is sort of like Central America with better architecture and water you can drink. Roosters strut around the streets. Feral cats prowl for handouts. And the manana attitude is reversed here: the tourists are laid back and the people in the hospitality industry happily do their jobs correctly and on time. What a concept.

Tracey threatened to quit her job and move here. One of our many friendly cabbies told us she would then have to look for two jobs if she wanted to live here, and get a third if she wanted to leave.

Most tourists are enthusiastically embracing the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle. In fact, the original Margaritaville bar and merch is here. I brought Jimmy's "Volcano" to play in our conch house. Sounds just right here.

Tracey on the pedicab. Snake and macaw wranglers are common here.

We've been on the ocean twice. Sunday we were delighted to find that we were the only guests on a trip into the Gulf of Mexico led by captain Anna and her mate Bethany. In fact, at 9 AM, we even had the streets to ourselves. This was a good thing, because I left my wallet on a bench then stumbled away to take some photos. When I realized I was missing my wallet, I ran in a panic back to the bench where I'd left it and found it undisturbed next to some equally oblivious tourists.

The boat trip was a testosterone-free adventure. The snorkeling was okay. The advertisements for "The World's Third Longest Living Reef" are about 98% wrong. Pale fish darted around white coral graveyards. I only saw one giant brain coral with any color, a pale yellow. Not like my first snorkeling trip in Biscayne National Park in the mid '80s, which was worthy of a National Geographic photo shoot.

Dolphins came close to the boat.

Monday we had a more successful snorkeling cruise in the Atlantic. We were on a sailboat with about 18 other guests.

I have to give you my fish list. Black and white stoplight parrot fish, yellowtail damsel fish, four-eye butterfly fish, pork fish, blue striped grunt, yellow goat fish, rainbow parrot fish, great barracuda (about three feet long and slender; not at all scary looking), and comb jelly fish. I was pretty freaked out when I drifted into a school of those jelly fish. They looked like a cloud of clear, round plastic bags about three inches in diameter. I didn't know if they could sting, and I was surrounded by them before I saw them. With all the floundering I did to get away from them, if they could have stung me, they surely would have, but one of the crew said if they don't have tentacles, there's nothing to worry about.

I saw some purple sea fans waving on the coral, but not many. Also saw some southern sting rays, about three feet in diameter. The biggest surprise was a gigantic blue parrot fish, about two feet long. What a pucker-lipped beauty.

As we sailed back to the harbor, we drank sangria and watched the famous Key West sunset, which at least on that day offered no threat to a typical Tucson sunset.

We had two wonderful breakfasts at the famous Camille's restaurant. Both times I had a crab, asparagus and sun-dried tomato omelet. My M.O. has always been not to mess with perfection. Camille's is a sun-filled Caribbean-colored delight with quirky art work. We were especially intrigued by the extensive Barbie collection displayed in one window. Each Barbie was dressed in a variation on the S&M theme. One had a spiked collar, handcuffs and whip; another was wrapped in cellophane and suspended by chains from the window frame.

I have always liked the poetry and karma of Saint Francis of Assisi. I was startled to find this wooden plaque in the ladies' powder.

The first feline companion to adopt Steve and me was Shadow, a quietly dignified black gentlecat. Sunbeam is our current fiery red head, a flirty and talkative jokester. We certainly don't want to drive away the memory of our beloved Shadow, and our darling Sunbeam has not taken his place, but I was stunned and happy to see them both mentioned in the same sentence by this fellow animal lover.

Saint Paul's Episcopal Church is an impressive Gothic Revival structure elevated above Duval Street, dazzling white like cane sugar in the tropical sun. Built in 1912 with an open-timbered ceiling, it is the fourth church on the site. The original was built in 1834. A hurricane destroyed the 1909 church.

The Golden Cockerel Medallion window was installed in 1920 in memory of children of the Lumley family who died in 1907 and 1876. The Golden Cockerel symbolizes watchfulness and vigilance, and is also a reminder of Peter's three denials of Jesus. I just like it because it reminds me of the roosters who brazenly stroll around the sidewalks and plazas here.

Nothing is ordinary in Key West.

Notice that the gingerbread on the porch is actually gingerbread men!

Only in Key West. A sitar-playing Spiderman busking on Duval Street

Same Days, Different Island

2008-12-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

Steve woke up Tuesday morning with the idea that we should not go home earlier, but should stay until Friday, when we were supposed to leave Tahiti. We went back to the airport and Air New Zealand agreed to change our reservation to Friday. We went to the i-site, the free traveler’s information desk at the airport. We should have tried this weeks ago. They found a place for us to stay on Waiheke Island off the coast of Auckland, and they booked our bus back to town and the ferry to the island.

We left most of our stuff at the airport, and took enough for three days with us back into town. We caught a ferry at 8:45 PM for the 40 minute ride to Waiheke. Punga Lounge, our B & B, had arranged for a cab to pick us up at the ferry dock. We got to Punga Lounge about 9:45, and the owners Rob and Dyan welcomed us and brought tea and home made apricot bars to our room. We had a king size bed, private bath and our own deck overlooking rain forest vegetation for NZ$125. The only problems were the mosquitos made us keep our screenless windows shut all night, the room smelled like bleach, and the wifi didn’t work.

Punga Lodge is about a 10 minute walk from Oneroa, the main town on the island. Waiheke is popular with Kiwis who come out for a day of swimming at the beach or visiting the vineyards. Some international travelers also make it their place to overcome jet lag at the beginning of their vacation, or like us, a place to unwind at the end. The island is inhabited by a variety of artists, activists, eccentrics and millionaires. Every blissful resident we met feels very lucky to live there.

Our first full day, we took a tour with Rochelle, the owner of Waiheke Island Adventures. She has been on Waiheke since the 1970s when it was a remote place, difficult to reach by infrequent and slow ferries. It was populated mostly by hippies, artists and retired people who collected rain water and lived in poorly constructed, unheated bachs, usually without toilets. She paid $6,000 for her bach. The island had 2,000 residents. She could have bought a nearby house for $2,000, but she decided to splurge and get the view lot.

Faster and more frequent ferry service has made Waiheke a suburb of Auckland. Now there are 8,500 residents and her house is worth $1.5 million. Of course, that doesn't matter, because like everyone we met here, she has no intention of ever leaving.

She took us to Goldwater Vineyards, where we tasted four nice wines. The young woman serving the wine and telling us the history of the vineyard calls Auckland "The Big Smoke". I asked her why, and she smiled, "It's different there". Seeing this didn't entirely explain it, she added, "You have to wear shoes there". We walked up a hill overlooking the vineyard and admired at powkanhani tree, a gorgeous green umbrella that was just starting to get its red bottle-brush-style flowers. It's New Zealand's Christmas tree, and will be in full bloom in another week.

She also took us to Top Knot Hill vineyard at Wild on Waiheke, a sort of party place and play ground. A chess board with three foot tall pieces was set up outside. We fell in love with a fabulous 2008 Chardonnay that was only $NZ25. Unfortunately, shipping a bottle home would have doubled the price. We might have done it if the lady serving the wine hadn't thought it was a really dumb idea. Jams, chutneys and the products of Waiheke Island Brewery can also be tasted and bought here. We tried the ginger beer and dark ale. Very good.

Two days in a row I had Scallops from Hell at Vino Vino in Oneroa while sitting on the balcony overlooking the ocean. The dish had a wonderful white wine and chili sauce. The scallops had a beautiful pink piece of meat curving around it that tasted like lobster. The waitress said scallops always look that way there. She also said Americans are always amazed by them.

Lacking public water supply system, each house has to collect rainwater in a big concrete tank, about 12 feet wide. At Punga Lodge, the tank is above ground, ugly, cracked and covered with moss. In newer houses, the tank is buried, which decreases evaporation and keeps the water cooler. People are worried about drought, because even in a good year, by the December dry season, water must be trucked in.

Our Punga Lodge hostess, Dyan, is funny and talkative. Rarely do ten minutes pass without her mentioning how much she loves chocolate. Her favorites are macadamia brittle from Northland on the North Island, followed by Reese's Cups, which are not sold in New Zealand, so her American guests sometimes send them to her or her pilot husband will buy them when he's overseas. I know Reese's Cup are pretty low brow, but I adore them too.

In addition to his main job as janitor of the lodge, Dyan's husband Rob is a pilot with New Zealand Air, and has sometimes carried his guests' bags all the way to the airport when he is flying to LA. He will be piloting the flight to LA 24 hours after ours.

I have found the ubiqitous sheep of New Zealand disgusting, in part because they are eating the country, and largely because of their filthy back sides. Dyan told us that the dirty wool from their butts is used to make carpets. The dried poop on their butts is called dags. It rattles when the sheep are forced to run. From this image comes the Kiwi expression for "hurry up": rattle your dags.

December 3 we took a walk on Oneroa beach and Steve found an arch in a mudstone and calcite outcrop. He presented it to me as a gift. We collected many shells on the beach, that like our cat Sunbeam, were orange and stripey. So of course in our minds, Oneroa Beach is now Sunbeam Beach. There were also lavender and peach striped shells.

We studied tidal pools for a few hours. We found transparent insects and little wee hermit crabs carrying shells 1/4" wide. Everything was in motion in the pools. The ocean water was as clear as drinking water.

The word paradise is frequently heard in conversations with the locals. The cinema shows art films like Young at Heart, The Band's Visit, The Duchess. People donated sofas and bring in pizza and Indian food. The friendly owner of the Indian restaurant told us with all that spicy food being consumed, the theatre smelled bad, but everyone was happy.

The community center has an art gallery where we were able to see the work of island artists. I bought some cards depicting a Tui and a Bell Bird painted by a local. We also peeked into the theater, where dancers were preparing for an evening performance. A Maori man and his wife who would be in the performance talked with us and gave me a hongi, the Maori nose touch greeting. Unlike the Eskimo greeting, the noses aren't rubbed, just touched.

December 4 we went to Palm Beach. At the west end of the beach, beyond some massive rocks, is New Zealand's first designated nude beach. The beach is wide and sandy and lots of shade can be found under the palms, Christmas trees and peach trees. Most of the people were our age and older, although there were some clothed mothers and children. Guess which side of the rocks we were on? This was the first and only time we got in the ocean during our trip. We saved some money and avoided crowds by coming at the Spring shoulder season, but I think next time we should come in Summer and get some use out of my prescription snorkel mask that I bought for this trip at the last minute.

Our last day in New Zealand was an odyssey starting with a walk to the bus stop, the bus ride to the ferry, the ferry ride back to Auckland, bus ride back to the airport, the non stop flight to LA during which we gained back the day we had lost on the trip west, another flight to Tucson, and home again.

The Customs Building in Auckland
Steve thinks there are other places in the world we ought to see, but I would be content to make every vacation a trip to New Zealand, to revisit our favourite spots and to explore what we missed.

Queenstown

2008-12-22T23:16:00.001-08:00

We drove back to Te Anau and were graciously welcomed at Shakespeare Lodge, a lovely home in a residential neighborhood at the edge of town. We had a frilly B & B queen ensuite room with breakfast included. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the fancy linen and crystal breakfast room, as we barely managed to get ourselves out the door under the disapproving glare of the manager. So cheerful fourteen hours earlier, he was not amused to discover that we find the challenge of mobilizing before check out time to sometimes be an insurmountable imposition on our vacation bliss.

We set a new check-in time record, arriving at Hippo Lodge in Queenstown by 2:00 PM. We were so proud of ourselves. Here we had a queen ensuite with a kitchenette for NZ$85. November 29 and 30 were to be our last days in New Zealand, so we wanted to be comfortable and have plenty of room to organize all the clothing, rocks and souvenirs that had been rolling around in our car's boot for five weeks.

Queenstown is the number one adventure tourism destination in the world. Skydive, river raft, parasail, bungee jump, speed boats, ski, Lord of the Rings tours. We didn't do any of that. Hippo Lodge is up a steep hill half a mile from town, so going into town to eat some meals and buy things made of possum fur was enough adventure for us. We did take the gondola to 1,500 feet above town and watch the lights come on in the village next to a huge lake.

We got to the Queenstown airport bright and early and turned in our trusty rented car. Steve eschews rolling luggage, and put a back pack on his back, a day pack on his chest, and carried rocks and stuff in the food bag I had bought so long ago in the New Market neighborhood of Auckland.

We learned our Air New Zealand flight to Auckland was cancelled, and we would have to go on a later flight. This was not good, because we only had about two hours in Auckland to get our luggage, change terminals, and get on an Air Tahiti Nui flight to Tahiti.

I changed US$400 for 285 Euros, which we would need in Tahiti, except when we would need Polynesian Francs, or something like that. The currency exchange booth had a sign saying they would not buy currency from Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan or Iceland. We assume that the accident of birth in the U.S. makes us immune to economic disasters and devaluation of our mighty dollar, but that confidence has been shaken recently.

Air New Zealand tried hard to get us on the flight to Tahiti. They put our luggage on top so it could be transferred quickly. They called Air Tahiti Nui to tell them when they expected us to get to Auckland, and how much our luggage weighed. We arrived in Auckland 30 minutes before our international flight, and managed to get our luggage, take a bus to another terminal, and dash to the Air Tahiti desk 20 minutes before departure. The plane was still on the ground, but the desk staff was preparing to go off duty, because they didn't have another flight for three more days. They wouldn't let us on the plane. They told us to go talk with American Airlines, through which we had booked the international flights using frequent flier miles. American Airlines said they could get us to Los Angeles on a flight that evening, but it would cost us $300 to change our flight. We were sick of traveling at this point, and resigned to missing the four night layover we'd planned in Tahiti, but Steve said he was not ready to get on a trans-Pacific flight that day. We booked a flight to LA for the next day, and went to an airport restaurant to figure out where to stay our last sad night in New Zealand.

I changed our briefly held Euros back to New Zealand and U.S. dollars. I bought a few phone cards in a vain attempt to find one that worked so I could cancel the Tahiti arrangements and look for a place to stay in Auckland. I ended up using my cell phone to dial direct. It worked great, but I thought I would be paying $2 per minute for the convenience. When I got home, I found I was never billed a minute for my cell phone use in New Zealand. That saved hundreds of dollars.

We got sadder and more burnt out. Steve decided while I looked for a place to stay in Auckland (unfortunately, Lantana Lodge was filled), he would go try to negotiate with Air New Zealand. It was their fault we weren't going to Tahiti. He figured they should compensate us.

Their customer service rep was wonderful. He listened to our tale of woe, and to our surprise, was able to verify that we had reservations on the Air Tahiti flight that we missed. He took responsibility for our inability to catch that flight. Apparently the plane we should have taken from Queenstown had mechanical problems. He offered several options. The next direct flight from Auckland to Tahiti on any airline left three days hence. No thank you. He offered to get us to Tahiti via Hawai'i. No. How about the Cook Islands? Did we want to see the Cook Islands? We briefly considered, but decided, no, we just wanted to go home. Verifying our complaint and proposing solutions had taken the rep over an hour at this point, and I whispered to Steve to just tell the rep we would take $300 to compensate us for having to change our flight with American Airlines, and I would be satisfied. Steve wanted to just wait and see how far the rep was willing to go. I went to make more calls.

A few minutes later, Steve came over to where I was guarding our excessive luggage and trying to find a place to stay that wouldn't be too depressing. He happily announced the fruits of his negotiations: Air New Zealand would put us up at a hotel in downtown Auckland, pay for our cab into town and back (NZ$72 each way), buy us dinner, breakfast and lunch, let us stay in the hotel until 4:00 PM when it would be time to go back to the airport, and they would put us on an Air New Zealand flight to LA. All because they cancelled a shuttle flight from Queenstown to Auckland. We were happy again. Needless to say we love, love, love Air New Zealand.

They put us up at the Crowne Plaza, by far the fanciest accommodations of the trip. The food was wonderful. I'm my mother's daughter, and made sure I got my money's worth out of the breakfast and lunch buffets, even though they didn't cost us anything. This is lunch: beetroot with tangerine salad, salmon, asparagus, dolmades, dried tomatoes with green lipped mussels, kumara salad, fruit, mince pie, pecan pie, and warm Christmas pudding with hard sauce, just like our Aussie friend Chris Eastoe makes each year.

Milford Sound

2008-12-22T23:10:00.000-08:00

After long delays due to money changing and grocery shopping, we finally started the two hour drive to Milford Sound in the late afternoon. Hiking and boating used to be the only ways to get there. In fact, that's how had we planned to get there -- hiking the Milford Track, said by some to be the most beautiful hike in the world. We were going to stay in upscale lodges with meals prepared for us. All we would have had to carry would have been our day packs with lunch and rain gear. This sounded much more appealing than backpacking and staying in leaky, cold dormitories. But my knee surgery forced me to admit that a five day hike over mountains and glaciers was not what I should be doing this year, so I had to cancel, losing my deposit. The road to Milford Sound was started in 1929 as an unemployment relief program. Workers used shovels and wheelbarrows. The 1.2 km Homer Tunnel was started in 1935. Worked continued on the tunnel until 1948, then stopped until 1952. The road finally opened in 1953. It slopes downhill in a 1 in 10 gradient. Traffic lights stop cars in one direction for 15 minutes at a time, so they can go through the narrow tunnel in one direction from 9 AM to 6 PM. The rest of the time, traffic is two ways. We’re glad we got through just before 6. While waiting for our turn to go through the tunnel, we were entertained by very tame Keas that land on car roofs as soon as a door is opened. They attempt to tear out the door gaskets, and are very agile about escaping slamming car doors. They also pose for photos. I didn't see anyone feeding them, although they must score often enough to make panhandling a viable occupation for them. South of the tunnel, the road to Milford Sound follows the a wide river bed of the MacKay River, filled with white, pink, lavender and purple lupins. Behind them were snow capped peaks. We were in a hurry to get to Milford Sound, and although we both wanted pictures, neither of us said anything about stopping until about 15 minutes later. We hoped we would come back by them in the daylight, and we did. We went to three locations and I took dozens of photos trying to get the exposure right. Here are the best ones. We will need to try again someday, and get there when the sun is higher. A tour bus guide told us the lupins are an introduced species, and like so many of the exotic plants and animals, have run amok. We don’t know whether that is considered a problem. Another introduced plant that dominates the landscape on both islands is the gorse bush, a yellow flowering bush that can get to be six feet tall or more. It provides welcome visual relief from the endless sheep, sheep, sheep, but it crowds out native plants that are more useful to the native animals. In some places, people apply poison to the gorse, but we read about a gentleman who loved the land and encouraged people to plant saplings of native trees among the gorse. The gorse shaded the young trees until they were big enough to survive on their own, at which point they shaded the gorse and killed it. A wise man, that. Accomodations at Milford Sound are limited. Mitre Peak Lodge is where trekkers on the Milford Track stay after finishing their hike at Milford Sound. If there are any empty rooms, as there were when we were there, non-hikers can stay for NZ$200 for a queen room with breakfast and a view of the sound. A twin room on the back of the hotel is NZ$150. Non-hikers can not make reservations. Rooms are only made available to the public on the day of guest's visit. November 27 we stayed at Milford Sound Lodge (NZ$245), or more accurately at one of the chalets by the river. Our chalet is a pre-fab building sheathed in corrugated metal and wood siding. The approach is not impressive, being dominated by the water heater and gas tank. Inside: wow. What a luxurious interior. King size bed, sofa, dining table, kitchen, deep tub, heated floors, towel warming bars. One whole wall of the chalet is a window opening to a deck facing the clear turquoise water of Cleddau River, rushing by only 10 metres away. Across the river is a rock cliff. Steve said it was better than the Ahwanee at Yosemite. A sound is a river basin, but Milford "Sound" is actually a fiord, scoured out by glaciers. We walked down to the fiord to see what we could see. The tide was out and we walked out onto a muddy, reedy peninsula to take some pictures of a water fall. The guide books recommend we pray for rain on our visit to Milford Sound so we can see the spectacular and numerous waterfalls, but we were quite satisfied with the fine weather and the one water fall we could see from shore. I think it was Bowen Falls, the largest of the 1,000 falls in the fiord, and the source of the water and power for the buildings at the head of the fiord. This would have been day four of five if we had hiked the Milford Track as planned. I think we would have avoided the rain that can make the trek unpleasant, with hard-won views obscured by clouds. The Blue Duck Restaurant is the only place to eat at Milford Sound, and it didn't sound good, so our Thanksgiving dinner was to have been omelets with salmon, but we were too tired to make that, so we heated some vegetable bean soup. We enjoyed the first decent bread we found in this country, Dovedale Grain Chia. We also had tasty cheese, the Kiwi name for cheddar, tomatoes, red capsicums and Speights Old Dark beer. We could hear and watch the river through our open door and the view made us feel elite. The next morning we saw where the budget travelers stay. The rustic dorms have small dark rooms with only beds. Guests follow covered porches to the bathrooms, kitchen and the unpleasant common area. The doubles were NZ$80 and all were reserved. We drove to the dock at the head of the fiord and boarded the Milford Mariner with about 30 other people for our cruise. The peninsula where we had stood the night before was under water. The fiord is a fascinating ecosystem. Eight metres of rain fall annually. Forty metres of fresh water is on top of the salt water from the ocean. Four hundred metres below the salt water is a region too dark to support life. The boat idled 10 metres away from a cliff rising 700 metres above the water. The captain said there were 250 metres of water below us. Fur seals were hunted almost to extinction in the 1880s, but we some some lounging on the rocks. We also saw Fiordland Crested Penguins, some of the rarest sea birds in the world. They seem to be interested in the boat, and obligingly hop from rock to rock. Stirling Falls is the one reliable waterfall in Milford Sound, even on a sunny day such as we enjoyed. The captain pulled close so we could find out why the fall is known as the Boat Washer. Trees cling to the walls of the fiord, growing almost parallel to them. Only 25% of the trees are actually rooted in soil or rock crevasses. The rest are rooted to each other. When the tree mass becomes too heavy to support itself, a tree avalanche is the result. Steve has frequently remarked on the similarities between New Zealand and his beloved California. In Fiordland, he keeps exclaiming "Look at the relief!", geologist-speak for breathtakingly high steep slopes. He is at a loss to name a mountain range on the Left Coast that can match what we see here. Over the past few days I have heard what I thought were gunshots, which seems strange in a national forest. I finally figured out the sounds are from rock falls.

Tucson Paheka Annoying Hoteliers from Coast to Coast

2008-12-22T23:09:00.000-08:00

Paheka is the Maori word for non-Maori. It is not usually intended to be derogatory. It's supposed to mean "foreign" although it can also mean "flea" or "pest".

This far south, the sun stays up really late. We can still read 12 point type outdoors by the dimming light at 9:30 PM. So we’re often out hiking or doing stuff until the sun goes down, then we realize that the restaurants have been closed for an hour, and the backpacker receptionists locked up shop two hours ago. So we show up at our destinations after dark, depriving the managers of much needed rest. We keep hoping to find a place that doesn’t have a 10:00 AM check out time, but it hasn’t happened yet. This further cramps our style as well as that of the manager, who is always very eager to get the sheets off our bed and into the laundry at the stroke of 10.

Blat is the Kiwi word for driving fast. Considering how much blatting is going on here, it’s surprising we don’t see more accidents. We did see the aftermath of two rather spectacular ones. A garbage truck missed a turn going down a mountain road, and sailed off the road, over a ravine, and landed shiny side up about 100 meters from the road. On another mountain road, a tandem logging train lost its load of tree trunks on an outside curve. They tore away the guard rail and tumbled far down the hill. When we got there, chains were being lowered down the hill to haul the lumber back up. Oops.

We rarely see one of the gaudy orange, navy and white police cars. We do see signs at every car park warning us to “Lock it or Lose It”. Sometimes the signs give more details on the dangers of leaving stuff exposed in the car. We usually comply, but crime doesn’t appear to be a big problem here.

We also don’t see any evidence of homelessness. It is really a relief to walk around touristy places and not be accosted by panhandlers. We wonder how the Kiwis are able to provide social services, health care and good roads with a much smaller budget than the U.S. has. I guess it goes to show what can be accomplished when money isn’t wasted on pointless wars.

Most of the tourists are Kiwis and Aussies. We finally have started to see some U.S. Americans now that we are on the South Island. One shop keeper told us she thought the U.S. workers must have the longest vacations in the world, and was shocked to find we have the shortest. When a Yank only gets two weeks off per year, I guess it makes sense to concentrate on the razzle dazzle glaciers and fiords of the South Island. Lord of the Rings fans have flocked here to see the movie sets near Queenstown. I have read that many of the sets have been digitally enhanced and it takes a lot of imagination to see what is shown in the movies.

People in the tourism industry are very worried about the U.S. economy, and many people have asked us when we think it might turn around. They tell us that since the financial industry upheaval in September, they are receiving booking cancellations, and tourists are only booking one month out instead of a year in advance.

There’s something to be said for letting the world vote in the U.S. elections, given that what happens in the U.S. has a profound effect on the rest of the world. If the world voted, we would probably have a better informed electorate and a better quality of government.

We rolled into Te Anau just before dark, of course, but Bob at Bob and Maxine’s Backpacker took it in stride and cheerfully showed us around the kitchen and to our room, a twin ensuite for NZ$75. Bob is especially proud of his wood pile stacked four feet high all around his buildings. The firewood was made from several types of trees he felled himself and split with a hydraulic splitter. Steve is pretty proud of his own wood pile, and though he had to admit it pales next to Bob’s, he was very impressed.

The exchange rate is shifting in the Kiwis’ favour. NZ$1 = US$0.564.

Thanksgiving lunch was eaten under an umbrella on the sunny sidewalk outside The Fat Duck in Te Anau. Baked sole and rice. We always read the wine menus, and I don’t think they ever have anything but Kiwi wine. We passed on the Sauvignon Blanc Mount Difficulty Roaring Meg (from Central Otago) described as follows: “Displays tropical fruit flavours intermingled with cut grass and dried hay.” I believe this is the wine of choice for New Zealand’s many sheep.

Te Anau (tey-AH-now) is sort of a strange, new, concrete and stucco town next to the enormous lake that shares its name. It seems to lack soul and character. All the shops and restaurants are along two blocks of the main street. A park is next to the lake along with some boats to take tourists to the glow worm caves. A Mitre 10 Solutions, a big box home repair store, is one block away from the main street. Beautiful tree covered, snow capped mountains surround the town. There’s no recent sign of the ubiquitous logging.

Catlins Coast

2008-12-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

We finally got around to leaving Oamaru and headed for the Catlins Coast. On the way, we stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders. These round rocks, up to six feet in diameter, look like they were dropped from the sky onto the beach.

They are actually calcite concretions that formed under water in the grey smectite mudstone. The process by which they formed is similar to the way a pearl is made. The concretions could have started as a piece of bone or wood. Eventually the mudstone around them eroded away, and the boulders rolled down to the beach. We could see more of them still trapped in the terrace above the beach. Concretions are not rare, but such huge and spherical concretions are quite stunning. There used to be many more, but any that were small enough to be hauled away are long gone.

We also collected a bunch of wonderful little snail shells. They were less than ½” in diameter, and the center spirals were opalescent. The outer spirals were mostly black with a sort of stained glass mosaic. We’ll add them to our sand collection that we display in bowls.

We stopped for dinner in Dunedin, one of the largest cities, which was founded by Scots and has beautiful Gothic Revival architecture. The train station was superb.

Dunedin (dun-E-din) was originally called New Edinborough, but that was criticized as being unoriginal, so the name was changed to the Gaelic version.

We got to Nugget View Motel in Kaka Point after 10 PM. The long suffering hotelier let us in. Steve asked whether he liked his work. He said it would be nice to get a break once in a while. This was a very nice place to spend the nights of November 24 and 25. We had a queen size bed, a kitchenette, sofa, bathroom with a towel warming rack, and a sliding door going out to the deck facing the ocean a block down the hill. It shouldn’t be too much to ask, but this is one of the few places where we had a shelves for our stuff in the bathroom, and the sink was large enough that we didn’t get water on the floor every time we used it. NZ$120.

Most of the roads are way better here than they are in the states. Due to the low volume of traffic, most of the bridges in rural areas are one way. As you approach, you might see a sign that says “Give Way”. This means traffic coming toward you has the right of way.

November 25 we headed out in the rain to Nugget Point. From the lighthouse on a cliff high above the ocean, we looked down on sea stacks made of some sort of bedded sedimentary rock that got tilted vertically. They looked looked like gold nuggets to someone. Out on the rocks, we could see elephant seals with their big round heads. It’s rare to see these guys on the coast. Most of them live on islands.

Brown rubbery bull seaweed twenty feet long waved around in the channels between the “nuggets”, looking like enormous multi-armed creatures. New Zealand fur seals, identified by their pointed noses, playfully rolled around in the water.

We hiked to the wide, three-tiered Purakaunui Falls, said to be one of the most photographed falls in the country. We dutifully added our photos to the infinite supply.

On the road to Owatea, we saw some Spur Winged Plovers. These birds have yellow masks that look like they are made of plastic. They could be one and the same bird as the Yellow Masked Plovers we saw in Australia eight years ago. We have always been fascinated by these birds, and wonder what they look like under their masks.

Kiwis call people like me who keep lists of the birds they see listers, tickers or twitchers. Some of these folks want bird names to be standardized, because they think it is cheating to count the Silver Gull in Australia and the Red Billed Gull in New Zealand, when they are really the same bird. I prefer to make up my own rules about twitching, so I count a bird on my list if it is the first time I have seen it in this country.

We took a walk on Tautuka Beach, which may be the most southern point we reached on our journey. 46 degrees and 36 minutes South. Seems like we're at the bottom of the world, but we're only half way! We got hailed on during our walk. Later we drove by a pond and I thought I saw some Spoonbills. It was raining and getting dark, but I got Steve to turn around so I could take a look. Sure enough, they were Royal Spoonbills. Huge, fabulous white birds with long, flat, black bills with spoons at the end. We’ve seen Roseate Spoonbills in Florida, but even their pinkness was no match for the amazing bills on these guys.

The town of Owaka is the only place with a grocery store. We stopped at the gas station and saw two beautiful vintage Indian motorcycles. A woman at the station proudly told us that the owner of the motorcycles was in the movie The Fastest Indian.

Oamaru

2008-12-22T23:07:00.000-08:00

Another marathon drive, south along the east coast this time, across boring farm land on a perfectly straight road, brought us to Oamaru (pronounced OH-ma-roo) on Sunday night, November 23. We stayed at Swaggers Backpacker (see the entry for Waltzing Matilda for a definition of Swagger) with the house mum, Agra, who lives in this crowded little Victorian house with her teenage son and transient folk from all over the world. She has a blackboard identifying the occupants of the rooms, and although we hadn’t committed to staying there before we left in search of penguins, when we returned, we saw she had written “Americans – Arizona” in the space for our room. We had a double and twin in a tiny room with shared bath for NZ$60. We climbed out the bedroom window to the fire escape, and could see the ocean about five blocks down the hill across the roofs of the houses, businesses and warehouses.

One of the three big attractions in Oamaru is a few pair of extremely rare Yellow Eyed Penguins. I think there are only 700 pairs of these harassed birds. Dogs and people are their biggest problems. Steve says they look like Sparky with his wrap around sun glasses in the Tom Tomorrow cartoon. We drove out Bushy Beach Road around 8:30 PM just before sun set, walked along a wooden path 200 feet above the orange sand beach, and found a pair of Yellow Eyes grooming each other just 20 feet off the path. Penguins are very shy, so it is surprising that they went about their business with a dozen tourists taking pictures from the other side of the railed walkway. Even more amazing is the climb they made through thick bush to get from the ocean up to their nest.

Oamaru’s second claim to fame is the colony of Little Blue Penguins, which at one foot tall, are the world’s smallest penguins. We paid our NZ$20 each and were admitted to a fenced area that used to be the limestone quarry on the rocky beach at the edge of town. We sat in the covered grandstand along with about a hundred other people and waited for the Little Blues to return to their nests under the cover of darkness after a day of fishing in the ocean. While we waited, a guide told us the Little Blues swim 25 km per day in search of food and dive between 1,000 and 1,500 times. Per day! He claimed they only sleep for a few minutes at a time, and are usually awake. They are unable to see the sodium lights that illuminate the rocky beach and the grassy terrace where some of them live, but they could see and would be frightened by camera flashes, so anyone who uses a camera would be asked to leave.

Finally, at 9:12 PM, the first raft of fifty penguins was swept onto the rocky shore by the waves. The guide says the birds are very tough, and in the five years he has been giving this talk, he has never seen an injured bird, even when rough seas hurl them onto the rocks. Seeing them land was the highlight of the trip for me. They pull themselves up on their feet, then stand around looking at each other for a while. Although they live in colonies, no one is in charge. They bend over like old men and wait for someone else to make a move. Eventually one of them gets brave enough, or gets shoved to the front, and the temporary leader jumps to the next rock and starts climbing across the boulders, using his webbed feet and flippers to slowly work his way up to the terrace. Sometimes they jump and miss their mark, and slip back down, but they get up and continue clamboring to their nests. It’s absolutely adorable to the humans, but I am also struck by how hard their life is, and how they are anything but cartoons, but very real creatures with unbelievable challenges.

It is breeding season, and until the chicks are about eight weeks old, one of the parents stays with the chicks during the day while the other goes out to sea to fish. After eight weeks, both parents go to sea, so the number of penguins returning each night varies. We were there on a very good night, and got to see over 150 penguins arrive over the course of an hour in about six rafts.

We were even more lucky to see two fuzzy brown chicks about six weeks old and nine inches tall standing around hungrily waiting for their parents to return. I was getting worried about them, because most of the adults seemed to have returned. The chicks went into a neighbor's rocky nest to look for help, but were promptly evicted. I asked the guide whether any of the other adults would take care of them if something happened to their parents, and he said no, they would die. As he was saying that, the parent returned and the chicks noisily chased him around, demanding that the parent regurgitate fish into their mouths. The guide said we can see why the harried parent was in no hurry to return.

Not all the penguins choose to live in the fenced area, and many wander the streets of Oamaru, going under buildings and screaming and growling all night. We could hear the wee birds from our room, five blocks up the hill. It was wonderful.

Monday November 24 we had breakfast in Oamuru public gardens among beautiful exotic trees and flowers, magpies, mallards and birdsong in the trees. Then we were off to inspect Oamaru’s third wonder: Oamaru Stone. Most of the commercial buildings and many homes are made of locally quarried stone, which the locals claim is soft and easily carved when fresh out of the ground, but it supposedly becomes hard after exposure to the air. It looks to us like limestone, which is a beautiful if odd building material for such a wet place. It seems to deteriorate where the fancy column capitols and pediment dentils are exposed to roof leaks, just like regular limestone. But it does make for a very elegant little town.

We changed some more money, and the exchange rate has again slid in our favour: NZ$1 to US$0.543.

We had lunch at the wonderful Whiskey Tea House in a grain and wood warehouse built of Oamaru Stone in 1882 next to the harbour. The ceilings were twenty feet tall, there were gigantic timbers holding everything up, and the dining room was illuminated by huge arched windows. Steve had salmon caught this morning, and I had vegetarian lasagna with spinach and a big pumpkin layer. Delicious. The Kiwis sure know their way around pumpkins and kumara.

Next door to the Whiskey was another limestone warehouse where the local bicycle club kept their collection of antique bicycles. A man in a nineteenth century vest and bowler hat was helping the tourists ride a bicycle with a front wheel five feet tall, as well as vintage tricycles. More magic.

Banks Peninsula

2008-12-22T23:04:00.000-08:00

November 22. My father died three years ago today, after being fascinated and amused by the universe for 97 years. He would have enjoyed hearing about our travels, and would be proud that I am able to make this trip. He is here with me.

Today, we only got a little south of Christchurch, to Banks Peninsula. We went to Akaroa, a cute little seaside town that was settled by a few dozen people from France in the mid-eighteenth century. Eighty-five percent of the houses on the peninsula are baches, or rustic vacation homes. Two volcanoes created the peninsula, and the hilly countryside is a stunning contrast to the flat plain the stretches from the peninsula back to the Southern Alps.

We went to a backpacker hostel on the main street and found they were full. The lovely proprietor called every other backpacker in town, and they were full. We drove out of town to the camp ground to see about a motel room. Full. We learned there were two weddings and a vintage yacht regatta in town that weekend. We went to the Hotel Grand, a place we never would have considered unless the alternative was to sleep in the car. Full. I checked the fine print in the Rough Guide and found the Katawea farm stay about 15 km out of town. I called, and they had a room with a private bath for NZ$120. The owner Judy Thacker told us to take our time, get some dinner, but get there before sundown because the mountain road would be dark.

We ate outside, checked out the harbour, ticked the Pied Shag off our life list, and drove to the top of the island as the sun went down. From there we saw the first fancy sunset of the trip.

When we got to the Thacker farm, Judy showed us around outside by twilight. The fabulous Victorian farm house has been in the family of her husband Kerry for 120 years. They raise sheep and beef on 1,000 acres, including several hundred metres along the ocean at Okains Bay.

When she showed us our room, we realized we were lucky we couldn’t get a place in Akaroa. Furnished with antiques and a fireplace, it looked like a decorative arts museum. Our bath room was about 12’ by 12’ with 14’ ceiling, a clawfoot tub, orange and green marble top on the big old oak vanity, brass fittings and a shower with no walls or curtain. It was palatial.

After we had some tea with Kerry, he and Judy and their sons turned on the television to watch the New Zealand Kiwis play the Australian Kangaroos in the Rugby League world championship game.

We were delighted to see the Kiwis perform a haka before the start of the game. Maoris do the haka, a war dance, intended not only to intimidate their enemies, but to show their respect, and acknowledge that the enemy is a worthy opponent. The Kangaroos stood in a long line across the field with their arms around each other’s shoulders while the Kiwis approached them in a menacing wide legged squat, slapping their thighs, shouting, and touching their own chins with the tips of their tongues. The Kangaroos were respectful, but did not back down, even when the Kiwis got right in their faces.

Everyone is surprised the Kiwis made it to the finals, and no one expected them to win, but two hours later at midnight, the Kiwis were rejoicing over the end of the Kangaroos’ 38 year dynasty.

Rugby League is a different game from Rugby, and at 6 AM the Thackers were assembled again to watch the New Zealand All Blacks upset the Aussie Wilds in the World Cup. This was the first time New Zealand won the World Cup in 98 years.

After a delicious cooked breakfast in the Thacker’s octagonal breakfast room with windows on all the walls and the ceiling, we left to explore the surprisingly good little Colonial and Maori Museum down the road toward Okains Beach. On the beach, I took lots of photos of the peach colored scallop shells, sprung open on the wave patterns in the sand on the shore.

We saw a sheep that had apparently fallen off the cliff at the end of the beach and drowned and got buried by the waves on the beach. Then we heard a bleating above us, and thought it was flying sheep, but it turned out to be a married couple of Paradise Shelducks. The male is black and the female is rusty brown with a white head. They flew into a crevasse in a sea cave, where we heard their babies bleating.

We finally figured out that the hawk we have been seeing is an Australasian Harris Hawk, a big brown fellow with white rump.

Over the Southern Alps to the Dylan Zone

2008-11-26T02:40:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, my mother had a red plastic tomato with a green stem cap to dispense ketchup. I had forgotten all about it until we saw one in a restaurant here. I was delighted to find one for sale at Silver Fern Foods in the town of Franz Josef Glacier, and I had to have it. Now I have to figure out how to get it in my luggage, which was overweight when we left Tucson, and has also acquired the inevitable rocks.

November 20 we made the long drive back up the west coast and turned inland to cross over to the east coast via Arthur’s Pass. It was a beautiful drive through a wide river valley that became narrower and greener as it wound up the mountains into the little town of Arthur’s Pass. A noisy Kea was the first creature to welcome us. There’s not much here but a general store, information center, three restaurants and a few backpacker lodges. They all play Bob Dylan, all the time. We stayed two nights at the Mountain House, paying NZ$70 for a room with a queen and twin, and shared bathroom. Steve got up in the middle of the night and went into the kitchen, where every vintage of Dylan enhanced his night owlery.

We hiked up to the Devil’s Punch Bowl, and got a close up view of an impressive 131 metre waterfall high up in the cool forest. Birdsong filled the air. Then we walked the Bridal Veil Track, which Steve considered a waste of time because we didn’t get very close to the fall, we had to walk along the power lines and road for much of the hike, and we ended up at the road, so we had to double back. The walk wasn’t a total waste, because a bold Kea flew right over Steve’s head and hung around while we took things out of our packs. He patiently posed for several photos, but when he saw that he wasn’t going to get a chance to steal any food or destroy anything, he eventually left.

Steve suggested we should try the Otira Track, which is above the bush line, so I thought it would be windy and barren. I wasn’t keen on it, but went along anyway. It turned out to be spectacular alpine tundra, which I had never seen before. Steve says it’s like Sierra Nevada. We rocked hopped across several streams that had bushes of Mount Cook Lilies next to them. We can't get used to the clear turquise water everywhere.Snow covered the mountain peaks, and somewhere up the river valley out of sight was a glacier. The highlight was sighting a Rock Wren, a new life bird. The tiny New Zealand variety is egg shaped, with hardly any tail at all. His back is olive and his lower belly is mustard yeloow. His pink legs and feet are way longer than they should be for his diminutive size, and as we approached, he did vigorous deep knee bends, probably in an attempt to scare us away from his nest. We were enchanted by his bravery, and gave him a wide berth. In the winter, he stays in snowy crevasses eating berries and insects. He is capable of going into a torper when necessary. He is an uncommon endemic, so we were particularly happy to meet him.

We spent so long in Westland, we have run out of time to do all that we wanted to do. The trip feels like life in microcosm. Every decision made involves letting go of an opportunity. We had hoped to see our Tucson friends Sonya and Andrew, who now live in Christchurch, as well as Amy and Ming, relatives of clients of mine, who own a hostel in Christchurch, but we have to be far away in Te Anau in a week. We decided we had better start down the east coast so we don’t have to make another marathon drive.

I think I have spent more time agonizing over where to go and what to see on this trip than I usually spend on buying a house or changing jobs. The decisions about how to spend this vacation seem so important, because we don’t expect we will ever get back here again. We want to try to make every day count, as we should when we’re at home. Steve says we need to remember that we are in New Zealand now, and enjoy it, and not let the inconveniences and disappointments let us forget what an adventure this is today. When we get home, it will seem like a dream, so we need to be fully aware of how precious each day is. It would be great if we could carry this awareness of the value of every day back to our Tucson life.

The End of the Road

2008-11-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

Westland is how I imagined New Zealand would be. A variety of huge exotic trees cling to slopes that rise from the ocean at a 70 degree angle. Snow capped mountains. Not much logging or sheep. Wild and unpredictable. We decided to go as far down the west coast as we could. Tonight (November 18) we are almost at the end of the road. It feels like the end of the world. We are staying in the Haast Beach Holiday Park, a campground and backpacker in Okuru. We can hear the ocean beyond the dunes. We decided to spring for a motel room. It’s NZ$90 for an ensuite room with a double and two twins, plus a living room and kitchen. It’s actually pretty rustic, but it has everything we need to feel comfortable and we are quite content.

My first night in Okuru was less than restful. Apparently the bed sheets were washed in soap powder that didn't dissolve. The result was an irritating bed full of soap that got rolled into balls as I tossed and turned. In the morning, I told the housekeeper the bed was full of soap pills, and I asked to have the sheets changed. She was outraged. "PEE-yulls?!?" She changed the sheets, but I know she muttered to her companion about my crazy claim of medications in my bed.

Fortunately, Steve was polite and charming to the housekeepers, as he is to everyone, so our hosts were left a net neutral impression of the Yanks.

We had dinner in Haast Junction at a weird place called the Hard Antler. It’s a bar and restaurant, and there are mounted animal heads in the bar and televisions showing a game show in the restaurant. Still, because we are sort of enchanted by the remoteness and simplicity of the place, we had one of those moments when we were really aware our luck and felt grateful. Our friend Alona can tell us how to say it in Italian: “It is sweet to do nothing”. La Dolce Far Niente.

Jackson Bay is at the south end of the road in Westland. We walked through the forest to the beach to look for penguins, but it was cold and raining. The only species besides us dumb enough to be out in that weather was a lone Oyster Catcher, and it was agitated, so we were probably near its nest, or it would have been hunkered down with the rest of the sensible wildlife.

We went to the Craypot to get something to eat. This is a tiny building like a caboose on a raised platform with eight cramped little booths. You enter through the kitchen. The only person on staff was the hostess/waitress/cook/bus person/dishwasher/cashier/tourist information person. I had gone in earlier when it was packed, not realizing she was dealing with about 24 customers by herself, and I asked where the trail head was. When we went back for food after our unsuccessful penguin hunt, the empty diner was in a shambles, and she was talking on the phone and trying to recover from the lunch rush. I started busing tables, and eventually she got the dishes done in the sink and gave some more tourist information to a caller, and finally was able to take our order. We have noticed that even the most modest restaurants in tourist towns serve gourmet food, but off the beaten track, fish and chips feature prominently on every menu. We were way off the beaten path, and reluctantly ate these grease bombs. We had to admit, though, it tasted pretty good.

Steve asked this multitalented waitress, etc., if there was any season we could visit and not encounter so much rain. She said it could rain any day of the year. Turns out, the weather is as versatile as she is. She said we could and probably would experience every season on any particular day. Sure enough, by the time we finished lunch, the sun was shining.

Back at the place we were staying, Steve had talked with Brian, the owner’s son, about fossicking (rock hounding). Brian told him where to look for big jade boulders on Jackson River, so we went several miles up a dirt road, fording a few streams I didn't think we should be crossing in our Corolla, in search of jade. Whenever I found a likely prospect, Steve would politely examine it and tell me that although it was really pretty, it was only serpentine. He smashed a lot of rocks to get past the weathered outer surface, and collected some stuff that might be jade, but we’ll have to take it home to find out. I was counting on his bag to be underweight so the two of ours would average under 50 pounds, but it looks like I’ll have to come up with another strategy.

The Glaciers

2008-11-21T12:59:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 17 we went to Franz Josef Glacier. It was cold and rainy and the viewing wasn’t so good. We took a walk to Peter’s Pond on a gravel path through rainforest that arched only about ten feet above our heads. Apart from being cold and wet and unable to get postcardy photos, it was nice. It’s pretty astonishing to see a glacier in a rainforest, almost at sea level. Without a guide, we aren’t supposed to go closer than 400 metres to the glacier. Steve of course went over the barrier and down into the braided stream bed to get a little closer, but he didn’t go all the way to the glacier.

We were suited up in our polypro, our waterproof boots, raincoats and rain pants and we were whining about how our raincoats were leaking. All my traveler’s cheques and passport got soaked. So we were amazed at how often we saw people happily strolling in the cold rain hatless, in shorts and flip flops. I guess desert life has made our blood reptilian.

The best part about Franz Josef was our first sighting of some Keas, the world’s only alpine parrot. They are fabulous, mostly olive green with red under their wings and on their rumps. They were flying around calling “Kea!” and looking for trouble. They are notoriously playful and mischievous, and will tear open back packs and tents and grab food out of the hands of unsuspecting tourists. We have seen photos of them in the snow. We also saw a Tomtit, which I would have called a Pied (birder talk for black and white) Butterball.

As we were driving away from Franz Josef, we encountered a road crew that had one lane cleared of a landslide that had covered both lanes of the road sometime in the two hours since we drove over that spot on our way to the glacier.

I was getting pretty miserable about the weather, so we went back to town. This caused the sun to come out, so we decided to go 20 km down the road to the less famous Fox Glacier. I’m sure the sunny weather had something to do with it, but we immediately declared Fox to be way better than Franz Josef. For one thing, the access to Fox is from its side, so you can drive a lot closer to it. The Fox River drains out from under the Glacier into a wide, gravelly valley with steep walls and impressive rock falls. Fox has lots of blue ice visible on its terminus. We rock hopped across a few streams to get closer to it, but when we reached a stream that required wading, Steve went on by himself. He just had to touch the glacier. I watched from about a quarter mile away as he stood under the overhang. The reason people aren’t supposed to approach the glacier without a guide is that the glacier is constantly calving, dropping tons of ice and rocks. Under the glacier is the wrong place to be. Steve was about to take a photo of a stream inside the glacier when a boulder dropped next to him. He took the hint and left without his photo. [Addendum: a month after we were at Fox, I read in the Wellington Post that an Aussie tourist was squashed when Fox Glacier calved on him. His cap was found in the river that drains the glacier. As summer advances, the authorities expect the river will eventually release his body.]

Tuesday we went to Lake Matheson outside of the town of Fox Glacier. It was cloudy, so I knew we wouldn’t be able to replicate the famous photo of Mount Hood reflected in the Lake, but I wanted to see the lake anyway, so Steve went along with it. We got close to a flock of impressively large and colorful New Zealand Pigeons, and saw a Pukeko (Purple Swamp Hen) strolling in a field. The big score was an eel, about two feet long, swimming around and under a deck built over the lake. I have never seen a wild eel, which the Maori call tuna. The eel sort of creeped us out, because it moved so slowly and dreamily.

Around the Glacier Towns

2008-11-21T12:58:00.000-08:00

A company here called Wicked Campers or something like that rents campers the size of our Eurovan. Each camper has a unique and randy paint job. I imagine there are many people who rented these things and were mighty embarrassed or outraged by the messages they had to carry around the country with them. These are some of the milder examples: “Congratulations on your one millionth fart” and another that said “If you are born again, do you have two belly buttons?” Some are truly X rated. Today I saw one I almost thought I could live with: “You can start me up; start me up, I’ll never stop.” My favorite Rolling Stones song! But that line was followed by the one that Ed Sullivan wouldn’t let Mick sing on his show.

Every wine menu we see here has the Chardonnay from the Church Road vineyard we visited.

Most hotels and restaurants leave their doors and windows open all the time, even when it’s 60 degrees F or less outside. We were in the Full of Beans restaurant in Franz Josef yesterday and a customer closed the door because not only was it about 50 degrees out, but it was windy and raining. The manager immediately went open and propped the door open with a huge assertive wedge. Other than that, it’s our favorite restaurant in town.

Westland

2008-11-16T01:10:00.000-08:00

November 15 we started down the west coast of the South Island to the area the Kiwis call Westland. Parts of it look like Big Sur in California. We walked on the Truman Track through beach forest and then flax plants to the Tasman Sea, where we found some nephrite jade rocks on the beach. The Maori call this stone greenstone, and made weapons and tools out of it.

Continuing south on SH6, we stopped at Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki for a few hours to marvel at these wonderful thin bedded limestone outcrops on the shore line. The signs claim that the origin of these formations mystifies geologists. The cliffs are grey, and alternating layers of mudstone and limestone resulted in differential weathering, so in the places where the mudstone has eroded, the side of the rock makes a convex curve inward. The result looks like an enormous stack of pancakes. But that explanation is apparently not satisfactory to some people, so they have cooked up the idea of stylobedding, which supposedly means when the limestone was in solution under compression, the layers of mudstone precipitated out. My family geologist never heard of this, and we think it sounds fishy. We were able to walk on the outcrops and see the ocean flow under a natural arch into soccer field-sized opening that becomes a blow hole at high tide. I got one shot where you can see the spray from the crashing ocean waves makes a rainbow. I heard the booming waves before I saw them, and I thought it was an earthquake. No such luck. Yet.

Lots of White Fronted Terns were gliding around, arguing with each other and nesting on the sea stacks close to shore, and further out was a colony of Spotted Shags, another life list bird.

Down the coast past Greymouth to the little town of Hokitika, where we stayed November 15 in the Birdsong backpacker. Two bunks, shared bath, NZ$70. Not a great value, but the owner Neil is a jolly fellow. His wife has painted a different native bird on the wall of each room, and cards with her paintings are available. It’s sort of a naïve style, pretty nice. Just down the road is a narrow dell where we walked with our torches in the dark after dinner to see glowworms. They are fly larvae that live on the steep walls of a creek drainage. They glow with a blue green light to attract food and look like stars. Very pretty.

Steve is losing weight and I am gaining. Getting from place to place and finding lodging doesn’t leave him as much time as he would like for eating. I however, eat a lot faster than he does, so I spend at least an hour a day waiting for him to finish. Often after about 20 minutes or so of watching him eat, I decide to order something chocolate to occupy myself while I wait.

So far our search for delicious chocolate desserts has been a failure, but we keep trying. We can't understand this, because most of the rest of the time the meals are fabulous and artfully presented. Steve says only the Italians, Germans, French and Americans (in the U.S) know what to do with chocolate.

On SH6, we saw Penguin Crossing signs like the Weka Crossing signs, but so far, no real Penguins.

I found one of Sunbeam’s hairs on my slacks today. It’s been a while since that happened, but it delights us to have a bit of her here with us.

Hokitika is on the tour bus route, and there are plenty of ways to spend money here. We went to a jade factory and saw some beautiful jewelry. We also went in a gold store that had gold nuggets. The local nuggets are smooth from being tumbled in streams. Nuggets from Fiordland are rougher, with more character. We really fancied a gold in quartz matrix specimen from the Nelson area.

A watercolorist named Fiona Carruthers was minding a gallery where some of her paintings were for sale. I bought two cards depicting palm trees. The original paintings are in a show in Darfield, on the road between Arthur’s Pass and Christchurch. If we go that way, perhaps I will check at the gallery and see whether I want to buy the originals. They spoke to me because they are the colors I used in decorating our second home in the desert.

Hokitika is next to the ocean, and we thought of having brekkie at a picnic table by the beach, but it was too windy and damp, so we ate in a restaurant and then went to Sweet Alice’s Fudge Kitchen because she offered free fudge samples. They were making waffle cones next to the marble slab where the ice cream is mixed with fruit. The thin batter was poured onto the waffle iron, a soft round waffle is cooked, and then wrapped around a cone. I had never seen that done before. They said they started making their own because so many of the commercial cones were broken in transit. They make soft serve frozen yoghurt to order with fresh fruit, so Steve got a kiwi yoghurt. Yum.

Now we are in the town of Frans Josef Glacier (pronounced GLAY-see-er). We paid for two nights (November 16 and 17) at the Top 10 Holiday Park, which is mostly a campground for the ubiquitous travelers in caravans, as they call the small RVs. We have an ensuite room for NZ$99. I thought that because we would be inside waiting for the rain to stop, we might as well have somewhere comfortable.

It rains 15 feet a year here, so we really shouldn’t be surprised that it’s raining now. We brought rain pants and waterproof coats and I bought a pair of waterproof hiking boots in expectation that we would spend a lot of time outside in the rain, but we haven’t needed any of that stuff yet, and now that we do, we are sort of bummed. We are further bummed by learning today that climbing on the Frans Josef or the nearby Fox Glaciers is not recommended for people within a year of having knee surgery. My surgery was two months ago, so that counts me out. The ability to take steps up to two feet high is required, and while I may be able to go up okay, I’m pretty sure going down will be a problem. I have done okay hiking so far, but there have been a few days when I wondered whether I would be able to walk the day after a hike.

Steve says we put off our trip to New Zealand just a little too long. We had always thought of hiking in this country as something we should do while we’re still in halfway decent condition, and leave the easy museum visits in Europe for our old age. But old age snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking.

Across Cook Strait

2008-11-15T01:47:00.000-08:00

We are sad that we had to put our cat Sunbeam in a kennel while we’re here. Until we did our laundry a few days ago, we occasionally were delighted to find one of her hairs on our clothing. Fortunately, our friend Chris visits Sunbeam in jail and takes tuna to her. We are delighted whenever we see a Sunbeam appliance here. So far we have seen a toaster, electric kettle and bed heating mats. At home, I discovered I have had a Sunbeam hair dryer for years. Chris assures us that Sunbeam is heiress to the toaster and hair dryer fortune, so we are pleased to see so many of her company’s products in use.

It is disappointing to see so much of the country clear cut. Sometimes the land is left naked, much is converted to grazing, and some is planted with the same, dark green, conical conifer, which I think is Douglas Fir, a pine from the U.S. The beautiful biodiversity of the mountainsides is marred by these monoculture scars of light green grass and patches of homogeneous trees. We keep paraphrasing W’s inane description of terrorists: “They Hate Treedom”.

November 12 we had to get up way too early to get to the wharf by 7:30 AM for the ferry to the South Island. The three hour passage across Cook Strait was smooth and sunny. We saw a few flotillas of Australasian Gannets (a life bird) and Shearwaters, although I’m not sure which of the 13 species of Shearwaters it was.

From the ferry in Queen Charlotte Sound, on the way to Picton on the South Island.
Last winter, one of the ferries got caught in a bad storm. In addition to passengers and cars, the ferry transports trains (tandem trailer trucks). The sea was so rough, one of the trains fell over and squashed a few cars. The ferry had to hide behind an island for hours, and the whole ordeal took eight hours.

At Te Papa museum in Wellington, we were able to go below ground to look at the base isolators, said to “put the brakes on earthquakes”. Because the museum is located on a major fault and contains national treasures, it was designed to move independent of the ground in an earthquake, which will reduce the chance of that the museum would collapse. The base isolators are piers made of rubber and steel layers. The Kiwi innovation is the lead cylinders inside the piers, which improves the flexibility of the isolators.

In the museum, we saw a dog skin cloak, worn only by the highest Moari chieftains. We saw a movie about the dedication of the museum in which the Anglo politicians were also wearing what appeared to be dog skin cloaks.

In an Indian restaurant, the menu said we could request our meal seasoned mild, medium, Kiwi hot, Indian hot or English hot. I asked what was the difference in the heat. The waiter said Kiwi hot is 6, Indian hot is 7 and English hot is 9. I said I was surprised the English would want such spicy food, because their food is typically bland. He said the English drink so much, they can’t taste their food. I got the feeling he was sick of explaining this.

November 12 and 13 we stayed at Accents on the Park in Nelson. This backpacker is two blocks from downtown in a Victorian house. Across the street is a cathedral in a big shady park. In addition to huge trees, the park has octopus agave and a red flowering century plant. We paid NZ$92 for a queen ensuite with a refrigerator. We had to pay an additional $NZ3 per day to hire a space in the car park.

Nelson is a pleasant town with good places to eat. I especially liked Lambretta’s, a bar and restaurant where I got a potato and kumara (sweet potato) roesti (pancake) with pan fried fish and a rocket (spring green) salad with capsicum (bell peppers). Some cool vintage Lambretta scooters are on the sidewalk and inside.

We were close to Tasman Bay and went for a long walk at sunset on Tahunanui Beach. We met a young couple walking their red bull terrier. They volunteered that they knew that pit bulls have a bad reputation in the States, but said it was completely unjustified. They were optimistic about Obama’s election, but this was the second time someone told us they hoped he wasn’t killed by skin heads or the KKK. It always makes me sad when people tell us about the racist or ugly parts of our country.

Lambretta’s is next door to Possibilities, the now age (sic) bookstore. Above Possibilities is the environmental engineering firm Golder Associates. We thought of going in and dropping the names of people we know at Golder in the States, and see if we could get work as field techs, but decided we really don’t want to work if we can avoid it.

Golder Associates in Nelson
Across the street from Golder is Falafel Gourmet, where we had a delicious Israeli version of falafel. The thick pita bread was really delicious, having been brushed with oil and lightly toasted with sesame seeds and some sort of finely chopped herbs, maybe dill.

The northwest part of the South Island is said to be the sunniest part of the country, and so far it has also been the warmest. The weather was beautiful for our drive up to Abel Tasman Park, where we tramped in the forest high above the Tasman Sea, then went down to Appletree Bay to eat lunch on the golden sand.

The birds were very tame. We almost stepped on a California Quail and a Silvereye (life bid) on the track and got within six feet of a Tui eating the flowers on a flax plant. A Fantail flittered just above us in a tree, and a Chaffinch wanted to be fed on the beach. We also saw Canada Geese (a first for the New Zealand list) swimming around. A Black Back Gull nested on driftwood on the beach. A pair of Pied Stilts seemed to be building a nest. One of them rapidly tossed leafy mud clots over his shoulder while the other quickly patted them into place.

We can tell when we encounter someone on the track who is from a country where traffic drives on the right side of the road. Kiwis and Aussies walk on the left side of the track, and the rest of us end up in a dance as we trying to get past them on the right.

We haven’t figured out why this would be the case, but the moon seems to be upside down here. In the northern hemisphere, the moon waxes from right to left, but here it waxes left to right. [Our rock scientist friend Tom tells us this is because, being Down Under, we were looking at it upside down].

The copper ten cent piece is the smallest denomination. The stores use the Swedish rounding method. If the price ends in 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, the price is rounded down. If the price ends in 6, 7, 8 or 9, the price is rounded up. I imagine people in the U.S. would accept this about as well as they did the metric system. Kiwis managed to join almost everyone else in the world in going metric 10 or 15 years ago, but we occasionally see old interpretive signs that give elevations in feet.

Thankfully, the Kiwis pay their employees enough so that we are not expected to tip. The Goods and Service Tax (GST) is 12.5%, but hotel rates are quoted with the GST included. Food is not taxed, but other things are.

November 14 we drove from Nelson to Westport on the west coast. It was a boring town, so we continued a few kilometres south to a four room hostel called Beaconstone, set on 120 reclaimed acres with a distant view of the ocean. This place was built eight years ago by a woman from California named Nancy and her Kiwi husband Grae. It has a very mellow feeling. We have a king bed and shared bath for NZ$75. It has composting toilets and solar power, which we are asked to conserve, so we are updating our journals tonight at the Jack’s Gasthof restaurant down the hill.

Beaconstone is almost completely free of utility bills. Rain water is collected from the roof and pumped up to a holding tank on the hill using solar power. Water in the pipes set in the concrete floor is heated by the wood stove, keeping the floors warm. Gas is used to run the refrigerator and cook top, and will heat the water if the sun doesn't come out for a couple days.

We misunderstood Nancy and thought we were supposed to use the outdoor showers and composting loos. It was cold out there, and we only took sponge baths in the outdoor sinks, fighting off nasty little sand flies. This experience was enough to convince us that no matter how lovely the setting, we would not spend another night here. Only after we had packed up and made plans to move south did Nancy say she hoped were were taking our "bird baths" in the outdoor sink out of choice. We realized that we could have used the indoor loo, sink and shower next to our room.

The exchange rate continues to improve. Now it’s NZ$1 = US$0.57. The price of petrol has dropped to NZ$1.54 per litre. Multiply by US$ 0.57 and multiply that by 3.85 litres per US gallon to get the price: US$3.35 per gallon. Last summer when the exchange rate was NZ$1 to US$0.57, it was about NZ$2/litre or US$5.88/gallon. Of course, the whole world thinks it's absurd the way we drive Yank Tanks and whine about the cost of petrol.

When Steve cashed some traveler’s cheques, he got some larger note denominations. The NZ$50 note is purple and orange and has Sir Apirana Ngata on the front. He was an early twentieth century Maori lawyer who served in Parliament and promoted Maori language and culture. On the back of the note is the Kokako, a large grey finch. On the North Island, he has blue wattles and his wattles are orange on the South Island. He makes a very loud rich mournful organ-like note. Unfortunately, we missed our chance to hear him sing at dawn on Tiritiri Matangi, one of the few places that stands between him and extinction. I hope we are able to go back there and camp on our next trip so we can hear the morning song.

The NZ$100 note is pink and orange and has the Mohua or Yellowhead, a rare native bird like a sparrow. If we are lucky, we may see him in Fiordland. On the front of the note is Lord Rutherford of Nelson, an atomic scientist.

Each denomination is a different size, which is thoughtful for people with impaired vision.

The green kiwi fruit is especially tasty here at its source. We tried the golden kiwi, which has a hairless skin that doesn’t need to be peeled. It’s good, but not worth twice the price of green kiwis.

On the drive to Westport, we encountered some white-haired Australian pensioners, the first people we’ve met who aren’t thrilled by Obama’s election. Mr. Aussie asked me what I thought Obama was going to do for America. I said for starts, he will end the war, which will save us lots of money, and help get the economy back on track. Steve said the war was based on the false claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Qaeda. Mr. Aussie didn’t seem to think those claims had been proven false. He asked what we thought of New Zealand and I said we had been told the South Island is much different from the North Island, but so far we still see lots of logging trucks and grazing livestock. Mr. Aussie said logging and grazing are the backbone of New Zealand, and the Greenies want to replace the grazing with vineyards. I said maybe wine is more profitable than wool, but he said the Greenies wanted to stop the grazing because they claim it causes pollution.

Eventually we reached the edge of the Kahuranga National Park and followed the Buller River through its deep granite valley which is so steep that it is unmolested by loggers and sheep.

Next to the road outside of Westport, we saw a sign like the signs in the U.S. warning of cattle or deer on the road, but this had a silhouette of a running chicken bird and warned us about Wekas. Soon enough, one of these flightless brown fowl ran across the road in front of us. Another bird for the life list.

Wasilla Hillbillies Looting Neiman Marcus from Coast to Coast

2008-11-10T15:01:00.000-08:00

We have said that phrase about a dozen times since we first read it Wellington's The Dominion Post yesterday, and we crack up every time. Now that the threat of a Palin presidency has passed, at least for the next four years, we and the Kiwis are enjoying watching the McCain campaign blame Palin for driving the Republican party off a cliff. Well, at least they can't blame the Democrats for giving Palin the keys to the car (or the RNC credit card).

On the way to Wellington, we stopped at Waikanae Beach, where we saw White Fronted Terns, another lifer.

We're in Wellington, the capital city. Our first impression of Wellington was not good. We got off Route 1 on The Terrace, high above the city. We saw people lugging themselves up the steep hills from the attractions by the harbour, a mile away. We started checking out backpacker lodges recommended by Rough Guide. They were unbelievably depressing flea bags. The city seems even more oppressive because there are no car emissions checks and mufflers are optional. We even checked out the Youth Hostel, said to be the pick of the backpackers. NZ$88 for a room on the fifth floor containing only two twin beds. No closet, no nightstand. Shared bath, of course.

We finally bit the bullet and ended up at Apollo Lodge, just two blocks from downtown on a quiet cul de sac. NZ$135 for two bedrooms, kitchen and bath. Plus off street parking, which was not available at the flea bags. Well, we could have bought an on street parking permit, which, like at the U of A, is really just a hunting permit. We're happy. In room internet for NZ$15 per day, too. It's only vacation money, right?

When we checked into the Apollo, the manager was on holiday. We tried to get the minder to reduce the rate, but she said she couldn’t because it wasn’t her motel. She asked us “Normal or trim?” It wasn’t a choice I was prepared to make at the moment, but Steve noticed that she had her hand on the refrigerator door, and deduced that she wanted to know what kind of milk we wanted for our in-room coffee.

There are lots of places to eat on Courtenay, and after dinner we walked around the City Centre, where there is a lot of large scale sculpture. We especially liked a huge metal fern ball suspended above the plaza. Downtown, the architecture is more interesting and the city seems more welcoming.

Tuesday we went to Te Papa, the national museum. They had lots of interactive exhibits about the treaty between the English settlers and the Maori (a dishonest deal, that), the geology, plants and animals, the changes humans have wrought on the landscape and art. We also took a bus out to Kaori Wildlife Refuge on the edge of the city, because the Rough Guide said it was open to 8:00 PM, which it wasn't. This isn't the first time the Rough Guide led us astray. The manager at the backpacker in Palmerstown North said someone who said he was from the Rough Guide asked if he could stay there for free in exchange for a possible listing in the book. The manager agreed, and said this guy was awful. Drunk all the time, threw up on the carpet, your basic nightmare. If he really was from the Rough Guide, I guess that would explain why some of the information in it is useless.

Anyway, we walked along the edge of the Refuge for a while, deciding not to spend NZ$60 for a night tour and the chance to hear and maybe see a Kiwi bird. We went on night tours in Australia and Costa Rica and decided they are just too invasive, and we need to leave the animals alone and let them go about their night time business without us shining flashlights on them. The Refuge has a patented fence around it, designed to keep out predators and non-native mammals who might try to dig under it or climb over it. The trees have been cut down for 10 feet on either side of the fence to keep critters form entering the Refuge by jumping in from an outside tree. Of course, they can't keep the flying beasts out, so it is not as pristine an environment at Tiritiri Matangi island, but the bird song was much more abundant inside the fence than outside. We should have gotten there earlier. It looks lovely, as does the Botanical Garden which we glimpsed from the bus.

Moving South

2008-11-09T01:13:00.000-08:00

Tonight (November 9) we are staying in Palmerstown North. It is half way between Napier and Wellington, the capitol of New Zealand and the southernmost city on the North Island. On Wednesday, we will take the ferry for the three hour ride across Cook Strait to the South Island.

It seems that even cactus will grow here. We saw some big prickly pears and agaves in people's yards today.

We found a nice backpacker lodge here called Civello. We have a quiet apartment with kitchenette, private bath, queen bed and a twin bed in another room for NZ$79. The best part is the free internet. I had gotten spoilt at the first few places we stayed where I had free wireless internet, so I could use my laptop. Then we encountered the more typical situation: I need to pay NZ$2 for 20 minutes on someone else's computer. Now I am able to upload the journal I have been keeping on my laptop to my blog using my laptop.

Today we went on a self guided tour of the Art Deco architecture of Napier. This town was demolished by an earthquake and subsequent fire in 1931, the height of Art Deco architecture, and the city decided to rebuild in that style. Miami Beach is often considered the Art Deco capital of the world, but I have seen Miami Beach, and Napier is way better. It's on Hawke's Bay, with a long, gravelly grey beach. The backpacker lodge where we stayed is on Marine Parade, the boulevard facing the ocean next to a long park. I want to move here and give tours of the fabulous buildings. I at least want to come back some February to attend the Art Deco festival.

Opossums are a huge menace here, and they destroy an enormous amount of vegetation. Like most introduced species, they have no predators, and the only way to control them is to kill them. An opossum industry had sprung up to try to make something positive out of all this death and destruction. Today we went to Opossum World in Napier. I skipped all the taxidermied possum displays that Steve said explained the whole possum problem. I was captivated by all the clothing that has been made out of possum fur. It is as soft as cashmere, and much warmer. It's mixed with merino (sheep) wool, because the possum hairs are too short to make yarn by themselves. I bought a purple knit possum/merino hat, and Steve bought a cranberry red one. Are we styling now! We have been promised that it won't stink like a wet dog when it gets wet.

We made a quick stop in Taradale for wine tasting at the Church Road vineyard. We tasted three whites and one red for free, and found we could live without any of them. The Rough Guide said if we were lucky, we would be offered the vineyard's reserve Chardonnay. I said I liked their regular Chardonnay, so we were given a sample of the reserve for free. It was nicer, but not nice enough to part us from our money

The New Zealand election was yesterday. No one seems to care. There are seven parties represented in Parliament. Green and Maori are two of the parties. The Labour party (similar to citizen-oriented Democrats) has been in power for nine years, and the country wanted change, so now they have the National party (business-oriented, like the Republicans). Many people had told us they weren't going to vote, and no one seems very optimistic that things will change. Sounds like the U.S. in 2000.

Without exception, when people hear our accents, they say something positive about Obama's election. One man told us today the whole world breathed a sigh of relief. A man from Turkey said he is very impressed that we have a black president, and it shows that the U.S. really is the land of opportunity. Overnight, the world seems to like us again. We just hope Obama can do half of all the urgent tasks ahead of him. What a mess he inherited.

Greetings from Gondwanaland

2008-11-09T01:12:00.000-08:00

On to the spic and span little resort town of Taupo, next to the gigantic Lake Taupo. We spent November 6 at the Tiki Lodge, where we had a queen ensuite with four extra bunk beds for NZ$75. We would have stayed, but we had to check out because a Frisbee tournament was taking over the hostel the next day. We moved the Silver Fern, which is only three years old, and copied from the design of the Tiki Lodge, but it’s actually nicer, with a kitchen and dining room over looking the lake. We had a king ensuite with a twin bed for NZ$80. It was supposed to be NZ$99, but we said that was too much, so the manager made a deal with us.

Lake Taupo is a volcanic caldera created 1,800 years ago, the result of the most violent eruption on Earth in the last 5,000 years. Across the lake are three gorgeous snow covered volcanoes. One of these, Ruapehu, ruined the 1995 and 1996 skiing seasons by spewing black ash for months.

A store manager told us about the Tangiwai Disaster that occurred on Christmas Eve, 1953. Her mother was working in Wellington and had a reservation to take a train to Hamilton to see her family. At the train station, she was told that there were three spaces on an earlier train, and she was offered a seat, which she took. That night, a volcano erupted, and the lahar (mud flow) washed out a train bridge along the route. The train her mother was originally scheduled to take went off the bridge into the Whangaehu River. Over 100 people died.

Back when he was a newly minted geologist, Steve did geothermal exploration in the western U.S. He read about the geothermal activity at Rotorua and the geothermal power plant at Wairakei. He never thought he’d actually see these places. We hoped we would be able to take a tour of the power plant, which was described as self promoting and open daily in our Rough Guide, but unfortunately it was closed to the public a few years ago and will be replaced by a more modern plant soon. There will be a rare public tour on November 15, in honor of the plant’s fiftieth anniversary. We think it was the second or third geothermal power plant in the world, after Iceland and/or Italy.

Twice we have gotten on the wrong road, and not recognized it until we had gone more than a half hour in the wrong direction. This is pretty easy to do here, because if you don’t notice the sign for the route you want as you circle the roundabout in a counter clock wise direction in bewilderment and fear of being hit, and you start off the wrong road, there won’t be any more route signs to confirm or deny that you have chosen the right route. The only place the routes are marked are at roundabouts, and the only way to figure out that you have gotten on the wrong road is to study the names of the towns on the map along your route and compare them to the names of the towns you go through, and if they don’t match up, eventually you have to admit that you screwed up, turn around, and go back.

For this reason, we had to drive almost all the way back to Rotorua to visit a must see attraction, Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland. It was definitely worth the trip. The Champagne Pool is on the cover of the Rough Guide to New Zealand, and its green and orange shore is gorgeous. Tiny champagne-like bubbles break the surface of the pool with a fizzing sound. Steam covers the lake, so one has to be patient and wait for a breeze to blow the steam away in order to get a good photo. A variety of mineral deposits give each bubbling pool its own colorful character.

Up the road from Wai-O-Tapu is a pond that has hot bubbling mud. The mud is spit into the air with an amusing "ppppt!"

I added the White Backed Magpie and the Fantail to my life list.

The reason for all the earthquakes, geysers, volcanoes and geothermal activity is said to be that two plates collide at the North Island. The Pacific Plate is subducting below the Indian-Australian Plate, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Off the road between Rotorua and Taupo on the Waikato River is the amazing Huka Falls. Huka means foam in Maori. The river is suddenly funneled into a narrow channel, and the power of the falls is as impressive as its stunning clear turquoise color. We are starting to notice that New Zealand rivers and ocean water have a very beautiful and distinctive swimming pool color, and the water is invariably free of sediment.

When we were taking turns minding our laundry, we watched television in our room. I was shocked to see bits of a documentary called The Road to Hell, about the influence Christian fundamentalists have had on the Bush administration and its policies regarding gay rights, abortion and pornography. The view of the documentary is that the extremists on the right have created a climate of intolerance, hatred and violence. We don’t watch TV, so I don’t know if this sort of thing gets aired in the US, but I have to doubt it.

Steve reported seeing a cartoon called Lil’ Bush that was sort of in the style of The Simpsons and very irreverently portrayed Bush as a bungling idiot who was under the thumb of the King of Saudi Arabia. Maybe this sort of stuff is on TV in the U.S., but we sure haven’t ever seen anything like it. (Update: when we got home, we discovered Lil' Bush is produced in the U.S. by Comedy Central). I can’t imagine that any U.S. companies would risk the wrath of the Bush administration by sponsoring a program like this. It was amazing to us that Kiwis are so aware of our government and so contemptuous of it.

We see ads for Tui beer on many of the bars here. We figured it must be the working man’s beer, and it would taste like Bud, but we felt it was our duty as tourists to check it out. It turns out it’s a lager, and darker and tastier than we expected. The bartender told us Tui is the beer of the North Island, so we did a taste test and also got a draft of the South Island favorite, Speight’s Old Dark Five Malt Ale. We liked the Speight’s (pronounced Spate’s) even better.

November 8 we stayed at the Waterfront Lodge in Napier, a coastal town on the east side of the North Island. Our room is a small one with twin beds and bath shared with 13 other rooms for NZ$65. It’s my least favorite accommodation so far, but we had already checked three other hostels and I was ready to give it a rest. I wish we could have stayed at the lovely Criterion Art Deco in the Art Deco district. It has the most amazing two story ceiling Art Deco lobby, but it was full.

We noticed today that there are no commercial billboards in New Zealand. What a refreshing change to be spared the visual affront and spiritual assault of crass commercialism. However, there are plenty of government sponsored billboards that constantly nag us to slow down, take a nap and don't drink and drive.

Change is Coming to the United States

2008-11-09T01:10:00.000-08:00

The Kiwis say it’s too cold for this time of year. We think it’s great. High 60s to low 70s, with very little rain during the day. When it has rained during the day, it is only for a few minutes, and it’s often more like a mist. We came prepared for torrential rain. Perhaps that is still ahead of us on the South Island.

Unfortunately, Steve has had a cold since our third day here. I am doing okay, and so far my knee, back, jaw and dizzy head have not given me problems.

The cigarette packs have very graphic warnings on them. “Cigarettes are poisonous” is illustrated with the bottom of a foot with a tag on the toe. “Smoking causes cancer” and “Smoking causes blindness” have hideous photos of afflicted smokers. I guess they don’t have anyone like Phillip Morris here to reign in the surgeon general. Smoking is not allowed inside buildings, though. Also, those who roll their own can buy a bag of filters.

The Kiwis are so pleasant and polite, it is a surprise to find that many of them drive like they are in Central America. Speeding along one-and-a-half lane mountain roads with no shoulder, they pass on blind curves and leave us in a cloud of dust. I suppose some of the maniacs are foreigners, but it probably the Kiwis who have adopted another Latino custom: the home made roadside crosses and flowers to memorialize where a loved one's soul left his body unexpectedly. In Spanish, they are called descansos.

Kiwis dress very stylishly. We have not encountered anyone from the U.S. The tourists seem to be from New Zealand, Australia, and of course the intrepid Germans are everywhere. Whenever I see an overweight person and I think I have spotted an American, she opens her mouth and turns out to be a Kiwi. This doesn’t happen often, but I am sort of surprised to see any overweight people here, because in previous travels, the locals were reliably trim. McDonald’s and KFC have made their way here, so that may account for the weight problem.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, November 4 and 5, we stayed at the Funky Green Voyager in Rotorua. This backpacker lodge was not crowded, so they let us have a big room with seven twin beds and a double, along with the bath room that would normally be for nine people, all to ourselves for NZ$59. It was very simple and clean. The manager was the first person we encountered who talked like us. He was from Vancouver, and had just finished three months of work and will start touring the country next week. He wanted to know what we thought of the presidential election, and we were amused by the Obama/Biden bumper sticker on his file cabinet.

Rotorua is a nice old town next to a huge circular lake. The most elegant building in town is now a museum, but it was one of the world’s original health spas in the early twentieth century, and got New Zealand on the map as a tourist destination. People came not only to bathe in the hot mineral springs, but to receive bizarre treatments like electrified baths.

We visited Whakarewarewa, a living thermal village that has been occupied by Maori since 1350. Today 26 families live in neat and trim wooden houses along the narrow streets that wind over hills between hot pools and fumaroles (geothermal steam vents) in the ground. A Maori woman showed us around the village, and demonstrated the art of hangi, or cooking in thermal pools. Food is tied in a muslin bag and lowered into the water, which is around boiling temperature. It takes a few minutes to cook fish and veges and several minutes for chicken. She also showed us the bathing pools, through which water flows until about 3 PM, when the flow is diverted so the pools can cool. When the tourists leave at 5 PM, the resident families all come to the pools to bathe together. The pools are cleaned every night, and made available for bathing in the morning before the tourists arrive again. I thought the water felt pleasantly silky. Steve said it was greasy. It was very clear. There are no bathing or cooking facilities in the homes, which look like normal homes from the outside.

We could see a geyser erupting to about twenty feet high, about 300 feet away. The height of the geyser varies with atmospheric pressure, but it is spouting continuously. The water level in one of the pools fluctuates with atmospheric pressure, and the Maori can use it to predict changes in the weather.

The guide told us bitterly that the pools used to be larger than they are now, but hotels diverted some of the hot water to heat their rooms. She also said the geyser we could see used to be part of their village, but the government put a fence between the village and the geyser, and now only people who pay a lot more to visit Te Puia, the government’s museum, can get close to the geyser.

The Maori at Whakarewarewa have been guiding tourists through their village for over a century, but the wooden fences to keep the guests away from the geothermal dangers have only recently been built.

When the Maori die, they are washed in a special pool, wrapped, and put into a tree for two years to decompose. They are then buried in vaults above the ground. It wouldn’t be possible to bury them below ground in this village because steam and water are encountered at shallow depth. Exhaust pipes have been installed in some of the vaults to release the steam.

We were able to identify the Welcome Swallow here.

We were surprised to see the Maori influence is so strong in daily life. Signs welcome us with Ora Kia and Haere Ra instead of hello and good bye. In parks, the Maori name of plants and animals is given along with the English, and the whole explanation is often translated into Maori as well. In Wellington and Taupo, the storm drains and manholes have beautiful Maori designs on them. More of the place names on the North Island are Maori than English. Perhaps this is because the English acknowledged in 1840 that they had stolen the Maoris' land. It was certainly stolen, but the white man’s remorse occurred here about 100 years before it crossed the minds of any one in power in the US or Australia.

Like paper money everywhere, New Zealand bills are much more colorful and imaginative than U.S. greenbacks. The five dollar bill is green and orange and has Sir Edmund Hillary on the front and the Hoiho (Maori name for the yellow-eyed penguin) on the back. There are two clear plastic inserts on the bill. One is a beautiful silver fern.

On the front of the blue ten dollar bill is Kate Sheppard, New Zealand's most famous suffragette. The Whio, or Blue Duck, is on the back.

The green twenty dollar bill depicts the Queen Mum and a Karaearea, the New Zealand Falcon.

We got back to Rotorua around 6 PM on November 5 (it was 10 PM in California on November 4) and found a news station on the car radio that seemed to be saying that Obama had 284 electoral votes. We didn’t allow ourselves to believe this, because the last two presidential elections were so crooked. We parked next to Lake Rotorua, and as we watched the sun approach the horizon, we heard McCain’s concession speech. I cried with relief. We jumped out of the car because a beautiful rainbow had just dropped one end of itself into the lake. It seemed like a good omen for new era of hope, peace, prosperity, justice and civility.

We walked along the side of the lake, and came across two Black Swans on the shore with their two fluffy grey signets. We named them Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sacha. Other birds spotted on our walk were the Chaffinch, New Zealand Scaup and Feral Goose.

It’s said that you will smell Rotorua before you see it, because the hydrogen sulfide gases steaming out of the ground give the air a rotten egg smell. The smell is not constant, and I’m not sure it smells like rotten eggs, either, because I have never smelled a rotten egg. The smell they put in natural gas is supposed to smell like rotten eggs, and Rotorua doesn’t smell like natural gas.

We were delighted to find white pumice rocks on the shore of the lake that were so full of holes, they floated. We also found lots of steaming fumaroles and bubbling pools. A friend of Steve’s once took a tape recorder instead of a camera with her to Europe, and made an audio record of her vacation instead of a visual one. We wished we had a tape recorder to capture the gurgling and belching of the Earth. The magical bird chorus at Tiritiri Matangi would have been a great audio souvenir, too.

We read that the acidic gases in the lake destroy the web on the feet of the gulls that live here. We wondered what the gases were doing to our cameras, but it was hard to keep them in their cases.

We were surprised to find that big cases of real fire works are sold in the grocery stores here. Many private fireworks exploded throughout the night in honor of Obama’s election.

The U.S. ambassador to New Zealand was appointed by Bush, but there was big party celebrating Obama’s election at the U.S. embassy in Wellington. We heard the ambassador announce as they waited for election returns that CNN was on the big television at the front, and Fox News was back there in the corner. The comment about Fox generated scoffs. Even here, people recognize that Faux News is a joke.

Obama’s election was front page news here for days. People seem to be jubilant that the Bush era is over and they are especially impressed that our country has "overcome its sorry history of slavery and civil rights abuses” as the Wellington Dominion Post said, to elect a black president.

New Zealand’s economy is also in bad shape, and they need the U.S. to recover so they can recover. The papers speculate that McCain would have been more liberal on international trade than Obama, yet Kiwis seem to think Obama will be better for New Zealand overall. This is only the second time I have heard anything about the candidates’ positions on international trade. The first time was in a mass email forwarded to me a month ago by a client from Mexico, whose Latino friends were sharing the somewhat alarming news that they thought McCain would be a better choice for people who care about Latin American. Of course, in the U.S., the media had us so worked up about lipstick on pigs and palling with terrorists, that we would never consider how our election affects and concerns the rest of the world.

Being the big hot pool fan that he is, Steve went to the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua for two hours of soaks in various types of mineral pools. I went to the St. Faith Anglican Church, built to convert the Maori in the lakeside village of Ohinemutu to Christianity. It has a rather amazing depiction of Jesus wearing a feather cape etched onto a glass window, bigger than life. The window is positioned so Jesus appears to be walking on Lake Rotorua.

The pews and columns have Maori carvings of faces with eyes made of paua shells, which are iridescent, like abalone. The walls are plants dyed and woven by the Maori into beautiful latticework patterns called tukutuku.

Nearby is the Tamatelapua Meeting House, built by the Maori in their tradional style with elaborately carved beams. All this is in a living Maori village of concrete block houses next to the lake.

Rotorua is my favorite town so far. It has a winning combination of geothermal wonders, Maori culture, elegant old buildings and good food.

All the food on this trip has been exceptionally good and creative. Asians are about 10% of the Kiwi population, although most of them seem to be in Auckland. They have brought great Indian, Thai, Turkish and other cuisines to the country. Even familiar dishes here are done with innovation. I like the dried apricots slivers and green pumpkin seeds on top of cream cheese frosting on carrot cake better than the usual orange food-colored frosting carrot.

Our favorite new fast food is Burger Fuel. They use their frying oil to fuel their delivery trucks. Their food wrappers are made from paper from sustainable trees. I love their V6-Vege: Chickpea, pumpkin, cashew and ginger pattie with cucumber, mango, yoghurt and "salad" (one leaf of lettuce) in a spinach wrap. I want to open the first Burger Fuel in the U.S., but I think they are already in Florida, Texas, New York and California.

Bells and Whistles, Toots, Hoots and Caws

2008-11-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

The morning we arrived in Auckland, and during most of the daylight hours we were near our hostel, we heard a bird that made three loud clear chords that sounded like a ceramic flute, followed by an assertive caw. We never did figure out what it was, but we smiled every time we heard the contrast of its beautiful and awful calls. We saw it once at the top of a tree, and it looked like a black bird or myna in silhouette.

The only new bird spotted in Auckland was the Blackbird, the kind with an orange bill, imported from Europe. Other birds seen in abundance were the Myna, House Sparrow and Starling.

Our Tucson friend Mary hooked us up with her friend Rachel. They worked together in San Francisco, and Rachel moved to Auckland six years ago. Rachel took us to dinner at a nice restaurant, along with two of her Kiwi friends.

As soon as we sat down, one of her friends demanded to know what is wrong with Americans. She wanted to know how Bush could get elected twice, and now we were considering this John McCain person. I told her it wasn’t our fault, and I had worked myself into a tizzy about the election for the past month, and didn’t want to think about it until Wednesday. She wanted us to know that the whole world is concerned about what is going on in the US. I said I was aware of that, and I’m sorry for the trouble our government has caused, but I really had nothing to do with it. After the requisite discussion of real estate and the stock market, we could finally move onto to more pleasant topics.

Saturday November 1 we took a ferry for the 80 minute ride from Auckland to an island wildlife refuge called Tiritiri Watangi.The first people to inhabit New Zealand, the Maori (pronounced Maw-ree) arrived only 700 years ago. Between the Maori, and the European settlers who came after them, and the non-native plants and animals these people introduced, by the twentieth century, this island had been stripped almost bare of trees and native wildlife.

In 1984 an ambitious reforestation project began. All non-native vegetation was removed, and a quarter million native trees have been planted. Every last cat, rat and opossum was also removed, and visitors to the island now have to bring their food and camping supplies in rat-proof containers. Dirty boots must be cleaned so no invasive seeds are brought to this pristine site.

I got 14 new life birds today: New Zealand Pigeon (huge, with a white chest and blue back), New Zealand Kingfisher, Bellbird, Tui, North Island Robin, Red Crowned Parakeet, Stitchbird, Takahe (flightless and very rare!), North Island Saddleback, Brown Quail, Pukeo, Little Blue Penguin and Variable Oystercatcher.

The Little Blue Penguin was seen very close up and personal in a man made nest of rocks and concrete near the shore. A plastic window is built into the top of the nest, and all we had to do was lift the lid to see the penguin. I would think that would get old in a hurry for the penguin.

We ate our lunch on a bench next to the board walk through the forest. The variety of beautiful birds calls was stunning. We just gazed around with happy eyes and delighted ears.

We had a huge treat on the ferry ride back to Auckland. The captain announced that orcas were swimming directly ahead of the boat. He killed the engine, and no one minded the delay. We easily found the whales, playing about a half mile ahead of us. They showed their black backs and fins as they rose out of the waves and dove back in. Eventually they were beside the ferry, a pod of six, a few hundred feet away. It was very exciting. The captain said he only sees them on the ferry route about three times a year. What an honor.

Sunday November 2, Apex Car Rental picked us up at our hostel and took us to get our car in downtown Auckland. We got a 2006 Corolla four door sedan with 60,779 km on it for US$30 per day, including the ferry ticket to get us to the South Island. We got an automatic transmission, because we figured we were going to have enough trouble driving on the left side of the road without having to work a manual transmission with our left hands, too.

For three days, we had been preparing for the challenge of driving on the left side of the street by attempting to be pedestrians without getting squished. We never really did get the hang of it. We could easily spot the tourists who were used to driving on the right. We look left, right, up, down, forward and backward before stepping off the kerb, because we really have no idea from which direction the cars may come at us.

I decided to be the first to have a go at Kiwi driving. I got onto a divided street and was immediately thwarted in my attempt to turn right. I pulled into a gas station, and as I was pulling out, I again realized the divided highway would prevent me from reaching my destination. Instead, I was on a freeway within minutes of taking the wheel. I was not ready for this. I was still figuring out the car. I quickly learned and repeatedly forgot that not only is the steering wheel on the right side of the car, but the turn signal is on the right side of the steering wheel, and up means left while down means right. Because the wind shield wiper control is on the left, I usually got the wipers going when I was trying to signal a turn or lane change. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

We headed toward the Coromandel Peninsula, where we were impressed by the sharp mountains and the huge fern trees. It looked like an environment where dinosaurs would feel at home.

We got to Whitianga (pronounced fit-ee-AN-ga) on the east side of the peninsula, and stayed at Turtle Cove, a nice hostel in a residential neighborhood away from town. We had a queen ensuite (private bath room) off the communal kitchen for NZ$66.

Whitianga is on a bay filled with sail boats. It sort of reminded me of a Central American town, with its harsh concrete block and metal buildings.

Monday November 2 we drove to Cathedral Cove and hiked to the beach. The Cathedral is a huge Gothic arch in the rock outcrop by the sandy beach. The ceiling of the cathedral is about 50 feet high, and you can walk through it.

New birds for the New Zealand list were Wild Turkey and Black Backed Gull. For the life list, I got California Quail, Paradise Shelduck, Yellowhammer, Red Billed Gull and Black Billed Gull. We have found the Red Billed to be a noisy bully who will not tolerate the presence of Black Bills, even though they look identical except for their bill and leg colors.

We then drove Route 309 across the peninsula to the west side, stopping to check out a small grove of Kauri trees. These old giants once covered the north island, but white men and their Maori predecessors almost completely wiped them out. They can live to be thousands of years old. The trees we saw were about 600 years old and about eight feet in diameter.

We spent the night at the wonderful Tui Lodge in Coromandel. We had a queen ensuite with a twin bed for NZ$75. The grounds here are green and lovely, and the bird song is a delight. The Lodge is named for a ubiquitous black bird, the Tui. About the size of a robin, he is black with some long iridescent feathers on his back and a couple of curling white feathers protruding from his chest like white bulbs. Some call him the Parson Bird because of this costume.

The town of Coromandel is pretty cute. The businesses are mostly along two blocks of one street, and the buildings are wood clapboard. Some of the side walk is covered like a porch.

Tuesday November 4 we drove down the west coast of Coromandel Peninsula. While the east coast has farms and beaches, the west coast has steep mountains rising from the Firth of Thames. We had a picnic lunch at Waimo Domain, where we saw Mallards and Black Swans floating in the salty water, and Song Thrushes hopping around in the grass.

In the town of Thames, we stopped at a bird hide to watch the birds on the shore. Life birds spotted here: South Island Pied Oystercatcher, Lesser Knot, Eastern Bar Tailed Godwit, Pied Stilt and White Faced Heron. The heron gets his feathers slimy eating all sorts of sea food, so he grooms his feathers with a dry powder pressed from his breast with his bill. He uses his bill to brush the powder on his feathers, and then combs the feathers with his toes.

New Zealand has twelve species of Shags, or Cormorants. We spot our first species, the Little Shag.

E7 is a famous female Bar Tailed Godwit that had a radio transmitter surgically implanted in her here in Thames. She set the record for the longest flight of a tagged bird. I don’t know if it’s still true, but the sign said Godwit migrations could be tracked on www.alaska.usgs.gov. In March one year, E7 flew 17,500 km from the Firth of Thames to China to Alaska, where she probably spent two months breeding. She then took a short cut and made the 11,500 km return trip, arriving back in Thames by September. We’ll try to keep her travels in mind if we are feeling overwhelmed by tourism.

Thames is a little nineteenth century mining town between the Firth and the mountains, with little clapboard houses with corrugated metal roofs. Very cute. We were disappointed that the little mineral museum is only open Wednesday to Sunday from 11 to 3.

Most of the North Island that we have seen has been logged and turned into pasture for sheep, goats, domestic deer, alpaca, horses and many varieties of cows. We have seen the regular black and white cows and the brown and white cows. We have seen a few of the tiger striped cows that can also be found in Globe and Sonoita, Arizona. Some cows look air brushed from their black legs and bellies up to their light brown backs. We saw a field of cows that were black in the front and back, with a wide white band around the middle. We call them barrel cows. We saw several horses wearing rain coats, but no rain hats.

The way these cows stared at us reminded me of Edouard Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe.

At first I was surprised at how many cows were packed into a small field, until I realized that I had gotten used to the starving cows of the desert, which each seem to need an acre to find enough sustenance. With all the rain here, the cows find plenty to eat and they don’t have to walk far to find it.

Steve asked some people for directions, and recognizing him as a Yank, they asked him who he voted for in the presidential election. After giving the correct answer, he got his directions.

The Week Without a Wednesday

2008-10-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

Lantana Lodge in Parnell, our first backpacker lodge in New Zealand

We left LAX at 8:30 PM on Tuesday, October 28 and were jet propelled across the international date line. Twelve and a half hours later, at 5:00 AM Thursday, October 30, we were in Auckland, New Zealand.

In the days before we left, we had numerous crises involving our plumbing, our cat, the stock market and our health (I now have TMJ and an expensive plastic thing to chew on at night). We wondered several times whether we could, should or would make this trip. We really didn't believe we were going to get here.

When we stumbled off the plane, we saw a sign advising us to Mind Step. It was starting to look like we weren't in Kansas anymore. As expected, we found the Way Out. We got on the travelator and continued to be filled with dread until we finally got through customs and found a shuttle bus to the city. The chatty shuttle driver had a lovely Ow-stray-lee-an accent and the steering wheel was on the right (or from our perspective, wrong) side of the bus. We saw highway signs that said Give Way on the ubiquitous roundabouts, and we were starting to believe we were really here and she'll be right.

On the ride to Lantana Lodge, our backpacker hostel in Parnell, a suburb of Auckland, the driver told us that ten years ago, you couldn't give away a house in Parnell. Now, he said, you'd be lucky to afford a dog kennel. Lantana Lodge is small, only nine rooms, and I think we have the best one, number 8. It is downstairs, and has a queen size bed and a balcony where we can hang our towels on the line with pegs. There are only two other rooms on the lower floor, and we share two loos and two showers with them. Number 7 is the worst: under the kitchen and next to the showers.

The shops along Parnell Road are so cute!

I am thrilled to be using my laptop in the sunny kitchen. I was able to plug it in with a plug adaptor. No power converter needed. We are a short walk from the wonderful restaurants and shops on Parnell Avenue. It's very quiet here, and the manager Raj, is very nice and helpful. The rate is NZ$75 per night, which works out to US$45.

The NZ$ has been in free fall. Bad for them, great for us. The exchange rate was NZ$1 to US$0.77 in July. Now it's NZ$1 to US$0.60.

Of course, everyone here is much more aware of what's going on in the US than our provincial country men are concerned about the rest of the world. The Chinese owners of The Strawberry Alarm Clock, a hippie restaurant in Parnell, asked about our presidential election, which for better or worse, we will miss. They even knew about the $150,000 wardrobe of She Who Will Remain Nameless. They were very interested in how freely we expressed our opinions of the candidates, and said no one did that in their country. I think they meant China, not NZ, because the newspapers here indicate that Kiwis (New Zealanders) are as opinionated as we are. Of course, they hope for their own good that we get a real fiscal conservative in office this time.

When we flew to Australia in 2000 on Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service), it seemed like a really nice airline. Lots of space, good food, hot moist towels, etc. It seems Qantas is not immune to the troubles plaguing airlines. It was maybe 70% full, and the seats have less leg room than American or Southwest. There are two aisles, with three seats in the outside rows, and four in the middle. We tried to book two seats on the outside of one of the back rows, hoping no one would sit between us. Then we could sprawl over four seats and maybe actually sleep. That wasn't possible, so we sat in 73 A and B, the last two seats on the left outside row. Toward the back of the plane, there are only two seats in the outside row, so at least no one was climbing over us.

I noticed one savvy traveler found a wall outlet behind our seat and he plugged in his computer. It's hidden under a 4" x 6" cover, so hunt around and you may find it if you get a chance to fly one of these monster planes.

Yesterday we walked about four miles around Auckland. The Domain, a huge park, is near our hostel. We went into the Auckland Museum in search of bird guides and geology books, but didn't find anything portable enough. We walked in the general direction of the downtown Sky Tower, which looks a lot like Seattle's Space Needle, but decided against a lift ride when we found out it would be NZ$25 each. We looked in the Borders downtown for our bird and rock books, and I found a bird guide, but still no book on the geology of New Zealand. We could, however, get a Roadside Geology of Arizona, if we didn't already have two copies.

The plant life here is amazing. It seems anything can grow here. Palms, oaks, maples, gigantic Norfolk Island pines, magnolias, birds of paradise, cala lilies, a tree that's like a bottle brush, anything, apparently but cactus.

Cascabel

2008-06-02T20:20:00.001-07:00

We went to a party in Cascabel last weekend to celebrate the defeat of the incredibly stupid idea of building an I-10 bypass through the San Pedro River Valley. The San Pedro is the only undammed river left in the Southwest, and it is a magnet for birders from all over the world. Not too many years ago, it flowed freely and was lined with magnificent cottonwood trees. Thanks to the burgeoning development upstream in Sierra Vista and the immunity from environmental concerns enjoyed by Ft Huachuca, the river is dry and most likely doomed. Putting another nail in its coffin by putting an interstate bypass through here is an idea that could only originate in the evil mind of a developer or a politician.

Cascabel is a magical little community of gentle folks living simply. It's about 90 minutes east of Tucson, and 20 miles north of Benson. Tucson friends of ours recently bought some land along the river. They had two nasty old trailers and a considerable amount of junk hauled away. They built a sweet little 8' by 12' shed with a corrogated metal roof for their home away from home and they have a composting toilet. The well has been cleaned out, but its water is too rusty to drink. We parked our VW camper among their mesquites and had a delightful getaway.

The locals tell us that sightings of vermillion flycatchers, western tanagers and hooded orioles are routine. We still got a thrill every time we saw a brilliant flash of fiey feathers zoom by us at close range.

After the sun went down, we heard an owl or some sort of night bird barking nearby. It wasn't the who who kind of owl.

As we were leaving our camp site to go to the party, we encountered a pink coachwhip snake asleep in our friends' driveway. He was about two feet long, and had bands across his back, with a very slender, solid pink tail. We wanted a photo. but didn't want to wake him. We didn't think he would be able to bite us because the evening had cooled off, but if a coachwhip does bite, he bites repeatedly, so we didn't want to harass him. By the time we got up in the morning, he had slithered away.

The party was down the road at Barbara's Cascabel Clay Works. Her home is a completely enchanting work of art, made our of found parts. It seems to have grown organically out of the ground, and my first thought on seeing it was "hobbit house".

Wayback Machine provided the entertainment and our pal, Gary Mackender sat in on the drums.

Why fences are bad. This poor guy can't figure out how to join his family on the other side of the fence.

The End

2008-01-22T21:58:00.000-08:00

Steve and I went to Waipio Valley overlook on Saturday, but didn't have time to walk down the road. Well, we had time, but the thought of walking back up, a 900 foot elevation change in one mile, seemed daunting, and there wouldn't have been much time for exploring the ocean and the water falls. Next time.

We blew the rest of our money in the adorable tourist traps in Honoka'a, another sweet little hippie town like Pahoa.
Sunday, on the way back to Hilo, we stopped at Laupahoehoe Beach, where Steve and Lee camped for $1 per night about 13 years ago. I don't know what the cost is these days. We seemed to be the only touristas around. There were lots of local families enjoying picnics and fishing. I continue to be amazed by the turquoise surf and the striking contrast against the black lava.

We also stopped at Hawai'i Tropical Botanical Gardens, which is on the ocean north of Hilo. A lovely place, with labeled trees. All the labels indicate the trees were from Asia or Latin America. I'm still not sure what a Hawai'ian tree looks like.

We ate our last Hawai'ian dinner at Royal Siam in Hilo, the third time we had Thai food on this trip, and the best, although the Thai restaurants in Waimea and Pahoa are by no means shabby. Way better than Tucson's offerings, but that's no surprise.

I didn't get to swim with sea turtles or dolphins, and we never got a chance to recover from our unfortunate first and only kayaking attempt in Belize two years ago, and the volcanoes and earthquakes didn't cooperate, but that just means we will have to get back to The Big Island soon. I will see whether I can get on some kind of e-mail volcano alert so we can rush back over the next time the mighty volcano goddess Pele decides to stir.

Northern Big Island

2008-01-19T13:10:00.000-08:00

Waimea, Saturday, January 19, 2008

The first photo is of Ali'i Drive by the seawall in Kona, another cute little town, and a little more upscale than funky old Hilo. Not that there's anything wrong with funky old towns. After all, I'm madly in love with Tucson, so funky towns speak to me.

Yesterday was spent on logistics, and then we tried to get to a beautiful beach that is in some of Bruce Ho's photos. He said it was the most beautiful beach on The Big Island. Unfortunately, we ended up at the beach to the south of the one we were aiming for, and the shore was too rocky for swimming. But I did get a pretty good shot of the sunset over the lava field.

Lee and Tracy left for Hawai'ian Acres as Tracy has to leave today. Now Steve and I are spending a couple days at the Kamuela Inn in Waimea while we check out the northern part of the island. Room 20 isn't bad for $109 including tax. A two room suite with a queen bed, twin bed, dining area and kitchen on the second floor. It would cost a lot more 10 miles down the road at Honoka'a, which is on the ocean.

Waimea is a surprisingly pretty town. Because it's surrounded by cattle ranches, Steve told me to expect it to be ugly, but it's actually like a quaint California town. At 2,400 feet amls, it has brisk air and a stunning view of the snow-topped Mauna Kea. A health food store, Korean and Thai restaurants and fancy clothing and jewelry stores indicate this is no cow town.

Two Step at Honaunau Bay

2008-01-18T02:09:00.000-08:00

We saw a yellow-billed cardinal this morning. He doesn't look much like the northern cardinal, but boy is he smart. This South American native was first noticed here in 1973, and while he is common on the west side of The Big Island, he is found nowhere else in Hawai'i. He is styling in his tuxedo, white collar, black bib and brilliant red head sans crest.

Today we went to Bruce's Ho's Photography shop. Bruce and Sally Ho have been good friends of Lee and Tracy since Tracy was in kindergarten and the Ho's son became Tracy's best friend. Bruce has been working on his photography full time for eight years. I bought a cool photograph for Desert's Edge.

Tracy, Steve and I then went to Honaunau Bay to snorkel. It's called Two Step because the safest way to get into the ocean is on two natural lava benches where you can gear up and then drop into the ocean. It was the best snorkeling I have ever experienced. The water was clear and still, the green coral was alive, and the number and variety of the exotic fish was astounding. I have always said that no one could make up a fish that's weirder than the ones that already exist in the sea.

I like Dave Barry's thoughts on the matter: "When you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean -- it's like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent."

The water was pretty cold, and I was shivering, but I couldn't drag myself back to shore. I kept taking "just one more look" for about two hours.

Then we walked around the Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, which is right next door to the snorkeling area. Better known as the Place of Refuge, this enchanting place was built in the sixteenth century. Citizens were subjected to endless rules and taboos. It was against the law for members of the lower classes to look at or walk on the same trails with members of the upper classes. No one was allowed to get close to the chief or even to allow his shadow to fall on him. Violations of the rules was believed to anger the gods, who would send lava flows, earthquakes, tidal waves or droughts to even the score. This was serious business, so only one punishment was suitable for law breakers: death.

If a criminal could reach his area's place of refuge, and he performed the rituals prescribed by the priest, he could be released after a few days imprisonment, and his debt to society as well as to the gods would be forgiven.

We got within five feet of a green sea turtle, about three feet long, which was resting in the cove at Place of Refuge. We learned after leaving that we can enter the water from Place of Refuge along the channel the turtles take to get to their resting place, which would have increased our chances of swimming with them. Next time.

Waltzin' Matilda

2008-01-17T02:43:00.001-08:00

Waltzin' Matilda isn't the national anthem of Australia, but it should be. It's a charming folk tune about a vagabond who gets into trouble for stealing a jumbuck (sheep) while waltzing matilda, which means traveling around with all his belongings in a swag (blanket).

For me to call my blog Waltzin' Matilda is a joke, because when I travel, I do not travel light as the swagman does in the song. All my traveling companions but Steve (who also schleps way too much stuff around with him) find it necessary to question the excessive size of my luggage.

What's great about the song Waltzin' Matilda is it has an underdog, some fun Aussie slang, class warfare, some civil disobedience and a ghost all wrapped up in a catchy ditty.

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolibah tree
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled
Who'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Chorus:
Waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda
Who'll come a waltzing matilda with me
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled
Who'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tuckerbag
Who'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Chorus

Up came the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker-bag?
You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me."

Chorus

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong
"You'll never catch me alive!", said he
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong
You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Chorus

To learn more about the slang and the story behind the song, go here.

And for one of the best war protest songs of all time, listen to "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda".

Green Sand Beach

2008-01-16T22:48:00.000-08:00

Kona, Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Today we drove from Lee's house to the green sand beach near South Point, the southernmost point in the United States. It's a 45 minute hike from the parking lot to the beach along a four- wheel-drive road. Along the road we saw beautiful orange sand with black basalt boulders next to the turquoise ocean.

The beach is in a cove surrounded by high cliffs. The sand is wonderful. Very soft, olive green from the olivene crystals that weathered out of the basalt. Some black pyroxene crystals are mixed with it, giving the color a nice texture.

The water is really clear, and the ocean floor is as sandy soft as the beach. I tried body surfing, but Steve urged me to stop because the waves were breaking so close to shore, he thought I'd get hurt. We all enjoyed bobbing up and down in the surf.

A local who looks like Santa Claus passed us on his dirt bike when we were hiking to the beach. He sat down by our stuff and offered us some water. He said he really wasn't interested in going to heaven, because he didn't think it could be any better than this, and there was the risk that there would be no beer in heaven.

We drove on to Kona, listening to some CDs that neighbor Lori lent to us. Some blues and Hawai'ian reggae made the night drive along the winding coastal road special. We felt grateful to be living this grand life on this astonishing planet.

Lori said there was an earthquake near our houses last night, but unfortunately, we didn't notice. I want to experience a noticeable but not destructive earthquake. I guess it rained pretty hard last night, but I am sleeping so well in the tent, I didn't notice. What little rain we've seen has not slowed us down a bit.

Now we're staying at King Kamehameha in Kona, a six story hotel that has seen better days, maybe in the 1960s. But we didn't come here to sleep, right?

The World's Longest Lava Tube

2008-01-15T23:38:00.000-08:00

Hawai'ian Acres, Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Neighbor Scott showed us the lava tube under Hawai’ian Acres. Said to be 40 miles long, it’s the longest lava tube in the world. Lava tubes are formed when lava that was moving below the ground drains out of its passageway, leaving a long tunnel.

We entered the lava tube through an inconspicuous hole in the rain forest floor. In places, the ceiling had collapsed and left smooth slabs like glass pottery on the floor. Most places it was easy to walk. The ceiling ranged from 10 to 50 feet high and the tube was 15 feet wide. I was surprised to find stalagmites and stalactites in a lava tube, because I thought limestone was an essential ingredient, but Steve says it could be some other kind of minerals precipitating.

Scott said a family weathered a hurricane in this tube in the 1990s. We saw the plastic sheets they erected over some posts. I was thinking about earthquakes.

In more recent local news, the coqui might have decided to be quiet when he heard Lee planning his demise by putting citric acid on him. Or perhaps he has found his true love and has relocated out of earshot of Lee's cabin.

We also got the water pump fixed, with the help of "Little Lee" in California, who read the pump owner's manual by cell phone to Lee here in the cabin. We all took turns pressurizing the tank using a wimpy bicycle pump. Of course, one might wonder why the owner's manual for the pump was in California, but it seems it is pointless to leave anything important here, because appliances turn to rust and books turn to mildew.

Scott says the sulphur fumes from the volcano create acid rain. There is also the matter of VOG, volcanic fog. You can see what it has done to this storage container. Looks like something our good bud John Villinski would like.

Hawai'i Volcano National Park

2008-01-14T23:48:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 14, 2008

Today Steve and I went to Hawai'i Volcano National Park. We warmed ourselves at steam vents where rainwater heated by magma hundreds of feet below the ground spewed out of bath-tub-sized holes in the ground. At Kilauea Crater we saw steaming fumaroles and coughed on the sulfurous fumes. Tern-like white-tailed tropic birds (koa’e kea), two feet long, half of which is a streaming tail, soared over the crater.

At Thurston Lava Tube, I saw an apapane, a small red honey creeper who likes the native ‘ohi’a trees and gets nectar from their red bottle-brush-like flowers. I loved listening to his beautiful, whimsical whistles, buzzes and trills.

Lava Trees and Lava Coast

2008-01-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

Hawai'ian Acres, Sunday, January 13, 2008

Lee was dismayed to hear the first coqui frog ever at Lee’s little cabin. An invader from Puerto Rico, the coqui is a problem for those who are fed up with hearing him tirelessly whistle his mating question “co-KEE?” all night. She is hoping he doesn’t attract any of his colleagues to our bit of paradise.

Yesterday we swam in the ocean. We went out 200 feet from shore in a small cove created by man-made surf break. The ocean bottom was covered with rounded boulders and sand, and even in the cove, we could feel a bit of undertow. Beyond the cove, surfers were riding waves about six feet tall. The ocean temperature is about the same as the air, 70 degrees. This beach is intriguing because hot and cold springs surface under the ocean bottom. While one hand might be in water that’s 100 degrees, the other can be at 60 degrees.

We stopped at a market by highway 130 outside Pahoa. Lots of Hawai’ian clothing for sale. A banner over one table announced “The Lawyer is In. 20 minutes for $20”. However, the lawyer was out. We could also have tarot cards or palms read for a dollar or less. We ate scrumptious salmon and artichoke crepes at a picnic table under a tarp while listening to Hawai’ian music very capably played by a native guitarist and a haole flutist. Haole (howlie) is a derogatory term for white folks, one of over 1,000 invasive species that have changed the character of these islands. A large and lovely smiling Hawai'ian woman in a straw hat and shell necklace danced a graceful hula dance.

At MacKenzie Park, we saw turquoise surf crashing against the black cliffs.

On to Lava Tree State Monument. This magical rainforest draws the eyes up and the mouth open. 'Ohi'a lehua trees and ferns towered above us, but plenty of sunlight was able to filter through the leaves and cast a glow on the forest floor. In 1790, lava flowed through the forest, covering the tree trunks to 12 feet deep. Moisture in the trees cooled the lava, creating hardened shells. Fissures opened in the ground and the lava drained into the fissures. The lava-covered tree trunks remain, creating spooky tree ghosts. The fissures are still there, too, extended far into the earth toward Pele’s home. Tame red jungle fowl (moa) strut around, as they apparently own the place. They were brought to Hawai'i by Polynesians for food, and now many have gone feral.

I have never seen photos of Hawai’i that made me want to visit. The problem turns out to be as I expected. Photos can’t capture the scale of the trees, the color of the light, the smells and sounds that are so much a part of the experience. But now I have seen some sights that live up to Hawai’i’s well-deserved reputation. One of the first big “wow” moments came as we drove through a tunnel made by trees arching over the road, with the ocean less than 50 feet away.

We drove several miles past “Road Closed, Do Not Enter” signs across a black lava field created by eruptions in the 1980s. Several towns were destroyed and the road was covered by the flows that stretched from the hill top miles away into the ocean near us. Tough little ferns are beginning to sprout from the cracks in the lava, and they are the only vegetation for miles. Like the ferns, some intrepid humans have rebuilt their homes on top of lava. A pretty bleak and ultimately temporary environment for a home.

Some of the ropey pahoehoe lava has weathered with a beautiful gold iridescent finish. We got as close as we could to the eruption that’s been threatening Royal Gardens subdivision since last week. A tourist got out of her car holding a camera and told us that someone at “The Center” said she could get pictures at sunset of the lava glow reflected in the clouds. Although it was almost dark when we left, we didn’t see any glow.

We Arrive on The Big Island

2008-01-12T23:08:00.000-08:00

Hawai’ian Acres, Saturday, January 12, 2008

I look like Albert Einstein. Fluffy grey wiry hair stands out in waves around my head. My 'do becomes more horizontally-oriented every day. It’s quite a change from the usual progression toward limp verticality. The humidity here doesn’t seem extreme. The weather is actually pretty close to perfect. But my hair is doing something I’ve never seen it do before. I’m traveling in disguise, and I hope my resemblance to the good doctor makes me look smarter, but to the casual observer, I probably just look deranged.

Steve and I arrived in Hilo Friday night accompanied by his sister Lee and her 31 year old son Tracy. We are staying at a cabin built by Lee’s boyfriend, also named Lee. Sadly for his many friends in Hawai'ian Acres and Santa Cruz, California, Lee’s home towns, he died suddenly in 2006. We are privileged to enjoy the presence of his spirit and the fruits of his labor of love here on the Big Island of Hawai’i.

Lee’s idea was to have a minimal impact on his three acres of rainforest on the lava field. The cistern collects rain water from the corrugated roof. The house is built with 12 inch wide redwood boards that were milled for Lee on the main land and sent here in a cargo container. Most everything else was salvaged. There’s no insulation, drywall or heat, and although it’s a little chilly at night, a heating system would be an unnecessary indulgence. A few bare light bulbs are attached to the ceiling.

The neighbors tell us it rained continuously for weeks prior to our arrival, but so far we have only heard quiet rain on the tin roof at night, with light breezes making music as they brush the palms.

A two burner cook top, apartment size refrigerator and a tiled counter top make the kitchen in one corner of the 20’ x 15’ main room. The kitchen sink is in the carport. The bathroom with its sink and toilet and the hot water shower on porch were proud additions after Lee had visited here for years.

Steve and I set up our tent on the wrap around porch and Lee and Tracy slept inside. Morning revealed the magnificent view across the forest to the ocean, 1,000 feet lower and about ten miles to the northeast. I hadn’t noticed the clerestory windows along the length of the roof ridge the night before, but they really brighten up the room. Lee and Lee have planted many native trees and bushes near the house. Most came from cuttings donated by the neighbors. Pineapple tops and avocado pits also get planted. The red and green ti bushes next to the porch are stunning. We have been enjoying the best oranges I’ve ever eaten from a tree they planted in the yard.

Mosquitoes are a new invader here, but fortunately for Lee and me, Steve and Tracy are mosquito magnets, so the girls haven’t suffered. Bright green chameleons called anoles hide under the towels we hang to dry on the porch, and can launch themselves off the porch or leap a foot or more between trees, sailing with their legs extended to their sides. Tracy said he used to sell these guys in a pet store where he worked.

Lee usually works on the garden or makes home repairs when she’s here, but it’s just a vacation this time, although cistern is leaking and water pump runs too much.

Saturday afternoon, we crowded into the funky little Puka Puka Kitchen in Hilo. This Japanese restaurant inexplicably features falafel as its lone non-fish dish. I had a delicious sautéed ahi ahi. Two-story, nineteenth-century shops are currently in a down cycle of many urban revitalization iterations. Palm trees are in the grassy park across Kamehameha Avenue. Beyond the park, the ocean reaches to the horizon and plus 1,900 miles more.

At the farmer’s market in Hilo I bought appliquéd pillow cases from the Philippines for $20 each and two sarongs for $5 each. Five strawberry papayas were $2.

Birds for my life list are spotted dove (Chinese dove or mountain dove) introduced from Asia in mid-nineteenth century; zebra dove (barred dove) from Asia in 1922, and saffron finch from South America in 1960s. The saffron finch is especially beautiful. Olive green back, yellow chest and orange face. Even with the birds I’ve seen before, I’m interested in knowing each species' genealogy. The common myna came from India in 1865 to control pests, and the house sparrow arrived from New Zealand in 1871. They are ubiquitous.

At Richardson Park, I got my first look at ocean-side lava. The black sand beach is speckled with white coral grains.

Just as in Tucson, black vesicular basalt boulders can be seen in walls all over Hilo. We also see lots of bougainvillea here, but unlike in Tucson, where people seem to be content with monochromatic flowers, Hawai'ians plant salmon, fuscia, purple, fire engine red, orange, rust and dusty rose colored plants all together. They don't exactly look like colors that Ma Nature would put together, but it's certainly festive.

Tell Us What You Really Think

2006-01-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

The next day we took a little 11 passenger plane back to Belize. The Placencia airport is adorable. We arrived 10 minutes before take off, and blissfully were not subjected to the usual airport harassment. The runway goes from one side of the caye to the other, and the dirt road to Placencia hairpins around the end of it. Speed bumps and signs on the road advise drivers of motor vehicles to yield to landing and departing planes. Sometimes they do. The runway ends at the ocean, and we lifted off just before the end.

The view from 3,000 feet was wonderful. We saw how much of the country is still intact. We had been disappointed in 2002 in Costa Rica to see that the jungles have mostly been logged and turned to ranches. Flying over the beautiful turquoise water of Belize on our way home from Costa Rica made us resolve to see whether Belize was in better shape. We are happy to report that most of Belize is still there, and we hope the government makes the right decisions in developing their infant eco tourism industry.

One reader of my travelogue commented that we seemed to have had a lot of difficulties and the trip didn't seem to be much fun. I reported the mishaps because they were as much a part of the trip as the delightful discoveries, but maybe some readers don't want to hear the complaints. I have found two Creole proverbs that offer two ways of looking at this situation.

"Di stilles calf suck de mos milk".
Literally, The quietest calf sucks the most milk.
Meaning, The uncomplaining person often gets the most out of a situation.

Or is it
"Di burying no deh weh di mos bawling deh"
Literally, The funeral isn’t where the crying is the loudest
Meaning, The grumbler is often better off than the uncomplaining person

Anyway, I have to admit
"Di fowl weh cackle da di fowl weh lay di egg"
Literally, The fowl that cackles is the fowl that lays the egg
Meaning, The person who resents or talks most about a wrong-doing is guilty of it.

Bottom line is, we enjoyed Belize and Guatemala, and hope to return.

We Still Don't Go Sea Kayaking

2006-01-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

Tucson, Arizona

Greetings from the real world,

I hit the ground running with work, but fortunately I did not have to face Minnesota or Zurich weather as some of our traveling companions did. I finally looked at my photos last night. Some of them are attached.

So, we decided to rejoin the sea kayaking trip out of Placencia on day three. The weather in Placencia had been nice, and Ajinder told us it should be better in the next few days. When I asked how things were going with the kayakers, he talked about his repaired motor boat, the Havana, instead. That should have told us something. A boatman took us in the Havana out to Little Water Caye, about 20 miles off shore, put a two person kayak in the boat, and headed to one of the Silk Cayes, where our group was camped. The ocean was reasonably calm until we left Little Water Caye. Then the wind started blowing and the ocean got choppy.

When we landed on Silk Caye, the campers were amazed to see us. Some thought we had come to rescue them, and they couldn't believe it when we unloaded our cumbersome gear and the boatman departed in the support boat Ajinder had borrowed, leaving the Havana behind.

Things had not gone well for the intrepid travelers. After an night on the sand fly caye during which the sand flies bit the campers all night, they crossed the ocean in bad weather in their kayaks. Fortunately, all were experienced kayakers. When they learned that Steve and I have never been in a kayak, they told us it was a good thing we didn't have to make that passage as our maiden voyage.

The caye is only half an acre or less. There are about 8 palm trees on the west side of it, and some viney ground cover with big round leaves. The kitchen and dining areas are here, as well as the tents for the 3 guides, captain Louis, leader Barnaby (both Belizeans) and G.A.P. guide Isabeli from French Canada. The east end narrows down to a point and has no vegetation. Here 6 tents are set up for the 11 tourists, and the kayaks were all beached. The only other decorations were some drift wood, drift garbage (even here!), the blue tarp covered toilet teepee, pelicans, sandpipers and hermit crabs. No bugs, thank goodness.

The night before we arrived had been a nightmare. At 2 AM, the wind kicked up to 40 mph. The tents were pressed against the campers, who had to lie on their backs and push back the tent walls with their feet. Then the rain started. Some of the campers were afraid they would be washed out to sea. The tour leader, Barnaby, wanted to go check on the other campers, but thought if he got out of his tent, it would blow away.

No one slept much, and when we arrived, the sky was grey, the wind was blowing, and the Coast Guard had a small craft warning. Everyone was haggard from lack of sleep and most were bored, because they weren't allowed to kayak or snorkel due to the wind. They were making lists of things they would have brought had they known they were going to be abandoned on a deserted island. When the wind settled down, they planned a triathlon: swimming, running and kayaking around the island. The entire race would kill about 5 minutes.

This was starting to look like a bad idea, with 2 days left in the trip. If the wind didn't stop, I wondered how we would get off the caye. What happens when we run out of water and food? I knew the cell phones didn't work out here, and I thought that Ajinder wouldn't miss us until we failed to return by 5 PM on day 5. Nobody else seemed to be worried, so I decided not to ask questions, and just assume things would work out. It wasn't until we had been there over a day that I learned that the guides were in touch with Ajinder by radio, who was giving them the Coast Guard warnings. I also noticed on our second day that park rangers came ashore to schmooze with the guides, collect landing fees, and make sure we weren't fishing in the preserve. So we were not as isolated as I had thought.

One of the campers caught an 8 pound barracuda, which the guides prepared for our dinner. Delicious, but bony. By the light of the kerosene lanterns, Barnaby told us ghost stores about his days plundering Mayan ceremonial caves. He said when he was a boy in the 80s, selling stolen Mayan artifacts was the second biggest source of income after marijuana. For all its faults, eco-tourism has created a lot of new job opportunities here.

The wind kept up all night, but the tents held up better on this second night the campers spent on this caye because 5 gallon water jugs had been tied on the upwind side. Our tent was staked with thick dried palm leaf stems, buried 18 inches in the sand. There were no more water jugs, so our tent was anchored to a 70 pound piece of coral. The wind filled our tent with sand, but there was no rain and our first night on the caye was not traumatic.

Day 3 the sun came out and the wind finally died down. We were supposed to break camp and kayak to another caye, but this was deemed unfeasible for some reason that we never learned. We took the Havana out to the barrier reef, the longest (175 miles) in the western hemisphere. The snorkeling was okay, but the wind had stirred up the sediment, so we didn't see much. I did float above a school of blue tangs, dessert plate sized electric blue fish, as we all slowly moved together through the waving fans on the coral.

After more hanging out on the caye, which we all knew very well by now, we were taken out to a fishing boat where the fishermen were cleaning their catch and throwing the guts in the water, attracting rays and sharks. We got in the water with our snorkel gear and watched the rays and sharks. The sharks were harmless nurse sharks, about 4 feet long. The rays were the southern sting ray, which we had seen before, and the fabulous spotted eagle ray. Both these guys are about 3 feet in diameter. A new sighting was the enormous manta ray. He looks like a circular blanket, about 6 feet across, fluttering through the ocean, trailing a six foot stinger behind. Very elegant. The rays don't want any trouble, and unless you touch them they will not sting you. When the manta ray glided under me, I stayed perfectly still so I wouldn't accidentally touch him with my fins. The guides bought some lobster and conch from the fishermen, which they later made into a wonderful stew for our supper.

The guides then decided to take everyone on a kayak trip to the next caye. After Steve and I got it through Isabeli's head that we have never kayaked before, she finally attempted to teach us, but she wasn't very helpful, because she is French Canadian and admits she has trouble remembering the correct English words for left and right. She shouted contradictory and useless instructions (in a charming French accent) and put her kayak in our path until we just decided to ignore her and try to figure it out ourselves. The kayak was very unstable, and we were constantly making little adjustments in our weight to try to keep upright. Unfortunately, the waves were still about 2 feet high, and we both shifted in the same direction at the same time, and tipped the kayak over. Most of our lesson was spent pumping the water out of the kayak and learning how to get back in the kayak. The others, who all believe that kayaks are very stable and practically impossible to tip over, were amazed that we managed to dump ours, but to us it seemed inevitable. After we got back on shore, the guides promised us a wider, more stable kayak the next day, one with a rudder that works. We were game to try to get the hang of this kayaking thing, but the next day, the wind kicked up again and all but 3 kayaks were towed behind the Havana back to Little Water Caye. Only 2 guides and the 3 strongest tourist paddlers were allowed to paddle. We were amazed that it only took them a little longer in the kayaks than we took, pounding across the waves in the motor boat.

Our last night in Placencia was spent at the facetiously-named Paradise Vacation Hotel. Don't stay there! It's a dump!

Placencia, Belize

2006-01-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

We got home late last night. As we flew over the familiar streets of Tucson, Chuck Berry was in my head:

"Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today.
We just touched down on an international runway.
Jet propelled back home from overseas to the USA"

It was so nice to wake up at home this morning. I realized half way through the tour that I usually spend several hours a day reading and writing, and our days on the trip were so full, I rarely had more than a few minutes for either. My routine, or lack of routine, was also disrupted by having to eat and board busses at the same time everyone else did.

There is a curious concept of Belize Time, which is used to explain all the waiting we did. The tour guides and restaurants were usually very slow, and we were supposed to slow down and adapt to the laid back Caribbean lifestyle. The ironic thing is, while the locals are happily laid back and urging the tourists to adopt their attitude, the tourists are unable to get laid back because we have to show up on schedule, even when we know we will have to wait for a guide or bus driver or waitress to leisurely, but cheerfully, get around to dealing with us. The three hour dinners became an ordeal that kept us out too late and prevented us from getting anything done in the evening.

Belize Time is also strange in that every time we went to a new hotel, we would have to adjust our alarm clock to synchronize with the approximation of the correct time shown on the hotel's clock. Sometimes the variance could be up to 20 minutes.

After we jumped ship and left the kayaking group, we spent 2 nights at the adequate Serenade Hotel in Placencia. It is on the sidewalk, which is the main path through the town's hotels, restaurants, bars and shops. The Guinness Book of World Records calls the sidewalk the narrowest street in the world, but this is a stretch. It is just a 24" wide glorified concrete sidewalk. No vehicles will fit on it, and any one who rides a bike on the sidewalk could be fined $100.

Placencia is a sweet, quiet little village, much more placid than the rowdy Caye Caulker. Its motto is "A quaint little drinking village with a slight fishing problem". It was a relief not to have people trying to sell us stuff in other towns, but along the sidewalk here are a few people displaying their handcrafted goods on blankets on the ground. The craftsmen and women seem to come from Punta Gorda to the south or the Garifuna community of Seine Bight to the north. Garifuna are a mixture of African slave descendants and South Americans. We bought bracelets and a mask.

Placencia was flattened by Hurricane Iris in 2001, just as the town was building up its reputation as a fishing and adventure travel hub. Thousands of trees and most of the buildings were lost. Lots of rebuilding occurred, and now many of the buildings have incongruously new paint jobs. The first real tourist seasons was 2003. Just as we saw in Louisiana and Mississippi, the hurricane made people aware of this place and investors flocked in, looking for opportunity, inflating the property values way above pre-hurricane prices.

Placencia is especially attractive because it is the only place where we could drink the tap water. Placencia water tastes as good as Tucson water used to taste in the pre-CAP days. When we first got to the country, we were warned not to drink the tap water. We were advised to not even brush our teeth with it. Brushing my teeth with bottled water is too much hassle, and I rationalized that maybe taking small doses of their bacteria-laden water would innoculate me against illness. It seemed to work. I got only very slightly sick for 2 days. A few of the others were miserable and unable to eat for several days. So maybe it worked, or maybe I got lucky. At any rate, I recommend a hepatitis A shot for anyone traveling here. We also got tetanus and typhoid shots and took malaria pills. Probably overkill, but we survived. There were fewer mosquitos here than there were in our house last summer and fall. The things that bit us in the night left a variety of scabs, bumps and blisters, but none of them seemed to have done us any lasting damage, although Steve still has an itchy spot on his knee, over a week since our last bed bug attack in Caye Caulker. [Turns out it was a bot fly! Yech! That's another story].

We also enjoyed the plentiful fresh fruit. Papaya juice is on most menus, and we drank gallons of it. The pineapples are especially sweet, and they were welcome treats on our camping trips. The oranges here have green skin because it doesn't get cold enough for them to turn orange. They are not exceptionally good. Fried plantains (a banana cousin) also turned up as a tasty side dish to the ubiquitous rice and beans.

Belize is a country where the oranges are green and the green iguanas are orange.

We Don't Go Sea Kayaking

2006-01-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

Two of our group left to take a sail boat to Placencia. Two others went to St George's Caye. Although everyone had already paid for a room in Belize City, most of the others opted to pay for another night on Caye Caulker rather than return to Belize City on January 1. We decided to keep our reservation in Belize City, which was a huge mistake. We had asked the tour leader whether anything would be open in Belize City on Monday, January 2, and typically, without any concern for the facts, she assured us "Jes, chur!" We thought a day of exchanging money, doing laundry, internet, postcards, souvenir shopping and visiting museums would be great. Unfortunately, nothing was open, including restaurants. Another plate of beans and rice in the hot humid hotel dining room.

We met the members of our next tour group the following day. All are at least 20 years younger than us. G.A.P. had subcontracted the sea kayaking tour to Seakunga of Placencia (www.seakunga.com). This company is owned by Ajinder, a long haired man in his forties who was born in India but lived most of life in Canada. He now divides his time between Belize and Canada. His skin is a lighter brown than most of the Creole, Mayan and mestizo (mixed ancestry) natives of Belize, and he says this is the first place he has ever been considered a white man. He is a smart, kind, environmentally aware man who drives a propane powered van and is building an eco-tourism resort. We like him very much, but the tour so far has had a typical half baked Belizean shine to it.

He drove us to Placencia in his van with our luggage loosely strapped on top. The requisite crack across the entire windshield. There was a downpour on the way, and my luggage and some of my clothes were soaked. One of the group members, who always takes all the mishaps in stride without complaint, was annoyed to make the 4 hour trip on a moldy seat that made him sick.

We stopped in the Maya Mountains at the home of Mr Jones, who is famous for conducting naturalist tours. Now he is slowing down, and is building guest cabanas and offering home cooking to travelers. We had a fabulous meal under his thatch roofed palapa as the rain poured. His lady friend came and sat with us and talked with one of our guides, Barnaby, about the changes since the tourists started coming.

Like Efrain, our hotel manager in Crooked Tree, Barnaby came to Belize from El Salvador as a boy in the 80s to escape Ronald Reagan's war against democracy in their country. Barnaby lost both his parents in the war. I don't dare ask him what he thinks of working for tourists from the US, but outwardly, he seems not to hold us responsible. I think he must realize that the citizens of our country have no control over and little knowledge of the malicious actions of our government around the world.

Barnaby says when he was 6, he was selling marijuana in the Maya Mountain town of Saint Margaret. Marijuana was the country's main export at that time, but the Mexican government sprayed pesticides on the crops and put an end to that.
Now tourism is 25% of the economy. Sugar, citrus and shrimp are the other major industries. Barnaby says Belize is not a third world country, it's developing country. The only place we encountered any beggars was in Belize City. He says there is no reason for any one to be a beggar in this country, as it is very easy for Belizeans to get a piece of land from the government to farm. After a certain number of years of development, one gains title to the land. There are 300,000 people in this country, which is the size of Massachusetts.

Anyway, we spent our first night in Placencia in Dianni's guest house, a small lovely place with 6 rooms and hammocks and chairs on the big second story porch overlooking a field. We woke to the sound of rain pounding on the roof. I thought it couldn't rain any harder, and then it did. I knew I did not want to be camping in the rain on a caye in the flimsy tents Seakunga was likely to provide. Up until the time the motor boat left to take us to the caye where our kayaks were waiting, Steve and I wondered whether we should bail from the trip. The trip started 2 hours late due to the squalls and rain. About 30 minutes from shore, the boat engine abruptly died. The guides were unable to get it started, and called for help on a cell phone, which seems to be as ubiquitous here as at home.

Most of the group took this development with surprisingly good humor. They ate snacks, joked, listened to music from an iPod through speakers that one of the guides had brought, and a few jumped in to snorkel. One of the snorkelers found a rust red and butter yellow star fish about 9 inches in diameter. He handed it up to the boat for us to examine. We were soaked, and I was quietly glad that the boat couldn't be fixed. I knew someone would be coming to rescue us, and I planned to try to get Steve to bail from the trip. Another group member, Julie, was thinking the same thing.

After an hour or more, Ajinder arrived with his friend Benjie, who happened to be at the harbour getting ready to go snorkeling when Ajinder got the call for help. Benjie transferred the passengers to his little fishing boat and ferried us to a nearby caye where there were a few colorful boarded up cabins on stilts, and a bar with a thatched roof patio. It was an abandoned attempt at a tourist resort.

It looked pretty picturesque until the wind died down and the sand flies started biting with a vengeance. Our gear was ferried to the island and we were informed that we would spend the night here while the boat was towed in for repairs. I was already weary of roughing it, getting bug bites in uncomfortable beds on shore, and the idea of camping a night on this sand fly hell, and then proceeding to spend 4 days covered with salt and sand and sleeping in the rain, never able to get dry, getting sunburned and sore from paddling, suddenly seemed like the opposite of a vacation.

Steve and Julie didn't need any convincing, and we happily rode Benjie's boat back to shore. Ajinder put us up in a hotel for one night and offered to do whatever he could to salvage our vacation. Julie just wanted to get home, and left early this afternoon. Steve and I enjoyed not having any schedule today and now we are going to decide whether to rejoin the kayaking group when Ajinder takes the repaired boat to them tomorrow, or maybe we will just hire someone to take us to Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Preserve, where we are almost guaranteed not to see a jaguar, but will see lots of other interesting things. The weather looks better for the next 2 days, and the kayaking group will spend 2 nights on a shady palmed covered caye, so we might actually get some kayaking in.

Caye Caulker, Belize

2006-01-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

We spent 3 nights at the Ocean Pearl Royale on Caye (pronounced key) Caulker, an island about 20 miles off the coast from Belize City. Our first full day, we went snorkeling (Ragamuffin Tours) off a 25 foot sailboat that holds about 20 people. It was a lovely day. We saw lots of pretty fish and a sting ray.

Unfortunately, the coral we saw was dead and dying because of a variety of human and natural assaults. One of the guides caught 3 lobsters. They were beautiful, with orange and green backs and purple undersides and antennae. He made ceviche with the lobster meat "cooked" in lime juice and mixed with cilantro, tomatoes, onions and green peppers. It was delicious, and we washed it down with rum punch as we returned to the Caye. I heard Jimmy Buffet in my head singing "It’s Been a Lovely Cruise".

The inhabited part of Caye Caulker is only a mile long, and 300 feet wide. There are two main dirt roads running north south and about 10 roads crossing them. There are no cars, just golf carts and bicycles. The sound of reggae music emanates from every restaurant, shop, and hotel. It's a funky little beach town with lots of back packers and Rastafarians. Magnificent frigate birds hang in the sky and sail boarders zoom along the shore.

Steve and I enjoy the white winged doves who visit our Tucson yard in the summer. We wondered where they go in the winter, and we are always glad to hear their "Who cooks for you?" call for the first time in the spring. We were delighted to discover that they winter in Caye Caulker. Here are our old friends, but with a distinctly Caribbean accent in their call, which sounds more like "Who cook fi ya, mon?"

Every morning of our trip, the first sound we heard was a rooster crowing, even in Belize City and on the first day of our river camping trip. The pattern continues on Caye Caulker.

Our first snorkeling trip was to Shark Ray Alley and to Hol Chan Marine Reserve. It was pretty good snorkeling, but we were promised better coral plus turtles, dolphins and loads of fish if we were willing to make the 2 hour trip out to Turneffe Atoll the next day. Steve decided to lay low because he is growing a fu manchu moustache, so he couldn't get the snorkel mask to fit tightly enough to keep water out.

What an ordeal! Unlike the nice big sail boat we took with Raggamuffin Tours, the ominously named Tsunami Tours took 11 guests and 2 guides in a small open fiberglass motor boat. Most of the 2 hour trip was spent pounding across deep ocean swells 6 feet high. I was lucky to be in the middle of the boat, and didn't take too much of a beating, but the people in the front groaned loudly every time we slammed down off the crest of a wave. At least one other person in the boat besides me thought the whole venture was ill advised, and I was regretting that I'd come. I wasn't sure the boat was designed to handle such a work out, and wondered whether I'd survive the trip.

My father died in November, and I was hoping I could evoke his spirit some time during the trip. He always took good care of us when he was alive, so I asked him to take care of me now. I closed my eyes and imagined he was driving our red and white ski boat around Embden Pond in Maine. It was stormy, but I knew he would get us safely back to our rented cabin. I suddenly felt much calmer, and I wasn't afraid anymore.

The snorkeling wasn't any better at Turneffe Atoll, but we did see dolphins, southern sting rays and a flying fish. Wow! The guide shot an orange and brown crab whose shell was the size of a dinner plate with his spear gun just so we would have something to look at. He released it, and said it would live, but it made me wonder about eco tourism again.

After 2 days of snorkeling and getting sunburned, I was too exhausted to make it to midnight on New Year's Eve. It's ironic, because one of the reasons we took a vacation this time of year was to avoid the nothing-to-do-in-Tucson-on-New-Year's-Eve blues.

The third day on Caye Caulker, we just enjoyed having no schedule. I got my hair braided into corn rows. A woman named Tracy, who has a jewelry and rock stand under a canopy on the beach, played Ray Charles and Bob Marley for me as I looked out at the surf breaking on the reef and she spent almost 2 hours braiding my hair. I figured it would be just the 'do for 5 days of sea kayaking and no fresh water showers. I was aspiring to the Bo Derek look, but had to settle for Bo Dacious. Still, it's a fun change, and it still looks great 4 days later.

Our tour group had pretty much disintegrated by this point. Our tour leader from G.A.P. Adventure Travel was a big disappointment. She's from Peru and her English is barely passable. Her knowledge of the flora, fauna, history, politics, geography and culture of Belize and Guatemala is completely non-existant. Our expectations were high after taking a tour of Costa Rica with Overseas Adventure Travel in 2002, where we had a native Costa Rica guide who could name every bird and tree, and gave a fascinating narration as we tooled around in our private, air conditioned bus.

San Ignacio, Belize

2005-12-30T18:59:00.000-08:00

We had Christmas eve dinner at Martha's, an excellent restaurant in San Ignacio. I had delicious tamales made of chaya, the local spinach. One of the tour members from Switzerland brought fabulous chocolates for everyone. The tour guide brought champagne. Everyone sang a Christmas song from their country. The Swiss offered O Tannenbaum, the French offered Joyeux Noel, one of the Americans sang Jiggle Bells, but Steve and I got the biggest round of applause for Elvis' Blue Christmas. It was certainly a Christmas celebration like none I've ever experienced.

Christmas day we went to Mountain Pine Ridge Preserve, listed in a book called "1,000 Places to See Before You Die". We had been warned that pine beetles ate 80% of the trees, but we went anyway. We went swimming in a river with nice waterfalls, but I didn’t think this place had anything on West Virginia or Maine.

We spent 2 nights canoe camping on the Belize River. We saw a flock of a hundred green parrots noisily squawking in their trees, then taking flight for a few circles together, and landing in the tree again. This was repeated over and over. It seemed like a game to them. A kingfisher sings a song that sounds like a squeaky version of the canyon wren's descending trill. I also saw a wood rail and grey hawk. The first night, I went to our tent and found a 5 inch black and white spider on the zipper. Needless to say, I was very careful to keep the zipper shut tight.

The guides from Tony’s River Tours are a macho bunch who carry machetes to clear our camp sites. They are amazingly quick, and can cut grass with each stroke of the machete, even though the machete is one sided. They smoke marijuana after lunch and dinner and drink rum all night. This may explain how one guide managed to tip over a canoe in an eddy on this wide and perfectly flat river. Our cooking pot and most of the dinner plates went to the bottom of the river. One of the dunked tourists is a lawyer, and I think Tony’s River Tours hasn't heard the last of this incident.

By now we are so used to spotting green (orange) iguanas and black spiny tail iguanas lounging in the tree tops, they don’t provoke such excitement anymore. These guys fall out of the trees a lot more often than you would expect, crashing through the branches and hitting the water with a SPLAT. Fortunately, they can swim, so this is usually just an inconvenience for them.

25 miles up river from San Ignacio, a Canadian company called Fortis has constructed a hydro electric dam called Chalillo. Efrain at Crooked Tree grew up in San Ignacio, and managed a hotel there a few years ago when international celebrities like Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy Jr were trying to stop the dam. He says Cameron is not nice, but Leonardo is.

Efrain says the whole project stinks of government corruption. Fortis bought the rights to the river from the Belize government, claiming that the dam would reduce Belize’s dependence on electricity from Mexico, and lower utility bills. Local residents and international opponents of the dam point out that the dam will flood 2500 acres, including the only nesting site for a subspecies of the scarlet macaw in Belize, as well as the homes of jaguar, tapir, and unexcavated Mayan sites. It will ruin eco tourism on the Macal River. The water quality on the river has already declined, and the mercury levels in the fish in the river have increased.

The Belize government got a conscience long enough to notice that Fortis’ geological assessment of the dam site was inaccurate, and ordered an independent assessment, which was never done. The dam was completed in November 2005 on an active fault. Various sources say the dam is constructed in limestone, sandstone or shale, but everyone agrees that it is not on granite, as Fortis’ assessment states. Failure of the dam, and destruction of San Ignacio seem inevitable to some. However, very little water is accumulating behind the dam, so hydro power production is a long way off, if it ever occurs.

Nevertheless, Fortis has control of the electricity industry now. Electricity rates in Belize are now 20 cents per kw, the highest in Central America, compared to 6 cents per kw in Mexico and 4 cents per kw for Fortis’ Canadian customers. And we thought Halliburton had a monopoly on cynical exploitation of developing countries.

Actun Tunichil Muknal, Belize

2005-12-30T17:17:00.000-08:00

We spent 4 nights at the Midas Resort in San Ignacio. Everyone else stayed in their funky little cabanas, but somehow Steve and I lucked out and got the master suite. I guess the owner is out of town, so we're staying in the main house. The bedroom is huge, with a California king bed, tiled walls and floors, a gigantic bathroom and lots of room for us to spread out the considerable junk we need to travel. We didn't tell anyone about our luck, but we enjoyed it. If we went back to San Ignacio, I would stay at Martha’s Guest House instead.

We took day trips out of San Ignacio. The tour of Actun Tunichil Muknal ("Cave of the Crystal Maiden") with Mayawalk tours ( was the highlight of the trip so far. Jimmy, the owner of Mayawalk, came to our hotel to tell us about the various tours we could take with his company. He bragged and prattled so much, that most of us became skeptical of his claims and a few got nervous. One person asked how safe we would be on this cave tour. Jimmy scared and confounded us further by telling us that British army was standing by to provide air support if needed. Belize, which was a colony called British Honduras until the early 1980s, still has Queen Elizabeth on their money and the British army helps defend Belize from Guatemala’s attempts to move their border east to San Ignacio.

Anyway, Actun Tunichil Muknal has become very popular since being featured in National Geographic. This is a limestone cave that was used by the Mayans starting about 750 AD as a ceremonial site. A river runs through the cave and we had to swim across a pool to enter it. We were wading or swimming or climbing up rock walls or crouching through low passages the whole time we were there. There are unbelievably beautiful stalactites and stalagmites of white, rust and black. One of the chambers is at least 80 feet tall and 200 feet long. The whole cave extends 3 miles. We only went a half mile in, but spent three and a half hours being astonished.

There are no lights, stairways or handrails. The only modern addition to the cave is a ladder we climbed to gaze at the chamber of the Crystal Maiden, a sprawling female skeleton that sparkles with calcite deposits. She seems to have been thrown into this chamber by the terrified Mayans as a sacrifice to their gods.

Drought and poor hunting conditions lead the Mayans to believe their gods were unhappy with them. They believe this cave was the entrance to the underworld, where their gods lived. If you look at the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, you can see how they could think they were looking at the roots of the trees of life. The Mayans tried desperately to appease the gods, who demanded ever more precious sacrifices. The bravest heroes of the tribes would spend months purifying themselves to approach the gods. They entered the cave respectfully terrified.

The themes of the sacrifices were corn, blood and water. It's another concept about which I'm unclear, but I want to look into it further. First pottery and food were offered, as well as metates. All were ceremonially broken, and they are still lying on the cave floor just as the Mayans left them. The drought got worse, and the Mayans offered animal sacrifices, then babies, children and teenagers. The calcified skulls and remains of 14 humans are still there for us to see.

The water level in the cave has risen since the sacrifices were made, and the relics and skeletons are being covered with calcite. We have to walk single file on the rock dams to avoid stepping on any cultural artifacts. Unfortunately, not all visitors approach the cave with the proper reverence and care, and a skull has been carelessly crushed. This site is really too special to have the public blundering through it.
Our guide, a local man named Raenon who has adored all things Mayan since he was taken to a Mayan site on a 4th grade class trip, has lead tours here for 11 years, and is very concerned that the cave will have to be closed to the public because there is not enough regulation, so the limestone formations and artifacts are in jeopardy.

It's a sad situation that the government doesn't seem to care enough about this site to properly regulate it. There is no licensing of guides, and while there should be no more than 6 visitors per guide, the rules are flaunted, and destruction is occurring. Even worse is the desecration of the holiness of the site. We feel extremely fortunate to have seen this completely unique place while it is still open to the public.

There were 2 guides for our group of 10 tourists, which is a good reason to take Mayawalk rather than another tour group that might be $15 less. Mayawalk has only licensed guides, and they comply with the cave restrictions on group size and behavior. The other guide in our group, Carlos, has a tattoo on his arm: "Royalty in Exile". It’s possible that he is just that.

Flores and San Jose, Guatemala

2005-12-30T16:20:00.000-08:00

I like the island town of Flores, Guatemala very much. Located in Lago de Peten-Itza, it was the location of the largest active Mayan ceremonial site at the time of the Spanish Conquistadors. In their usual way, what the Conquistadors couldn't understand, they destroyed, so there is no trace of the site now. Instead, you find an charming island city so small you can walk around the perimeter in about an hour, which we did.

The cobble stone streets are medievally-narrow and wind up the steep hill toward the Spanish mission style church and its plaza. In the plaza was an artificial Christmas tree with the word Gallo and a stylized rooster head where there would be a star on a Christmas tree at home. We soon learned that Gallo is the Guatemalan beer, and Gallo sponsored the tree. Gallo, by the way, tastes like Budweiser. Everything here is sponsored by something. The town rotary, for example, is sponsored by the Rotary Club.

We have seen orange and yellow crotons growing as hedges in many places, but this is the only place we saw poinsettia bushes. We stayed in a nice hotel (Sabana) with a balcony looking over the lake and the rusted tin and palm thatched roofs of the city. Palm-thatched roofs used to be only on the homes of the poorest people, but now the palms are in short supply and a special building permit is needed to build a palm roof, so only the wealthiest people can have palm thatch now. The 2 to 4 story buildings are painted every imaginable pastel color, and it's all very picturesque. It's also very touristy, with interesting shops, good restaurants, and high prices.

They use little 3-wheeled, 3-seat vehicles with canvas roofs for taxis here. The sidewalks are narrow and start and stop unpredictably, so we end up walking in the street. The first night in the city, we were walking in the street and were startled by one of these speeding 3-wheelers. The driver hit his warning alarm, which sounds like a baritone saying "Gaaaaaaahhhs" in an ascending song, followed by a bleat of the horn. We jumped out of the way, which we figured was the purpose of the warning. Steve learned that those particular 3-wheelers are not taxis, but propane gas distributors who race around the city like ice cream men. They run at all hours of the day and night, blasting their "Gaaaaaaahhs" warning. They are driving so fast and recklessly, I don't know how their customers can catch up with them.

One night we were eating with the group in a restaurant, and heard music in the street. We ran outside to see a procession lead by women carrying a male doll and female doll. It was unclear if the dolls were Mary and Joseph or a bride and groom. Children were in the procession tooting on whistles, adults kept the beat with maracas, and bringing up the rear were 4 men carrying a huge wooden xylophone played by 3 men as they walked along.

We took a boat ride across the lake to visit a real Guatemalan town, San Jose. Here pigs and chickens wander around the steep unpaved streets. We took a Spanish lesson from some locals who support themselves by teaching Spanish to the turistas. I realized that I am one of only 3 in our group of 12 who is mono-lingual. Of course, the other 2 are also from the US. Again I felt that I can not be a citizen of the world if I only speak English, and I renewed my resolve to learn Spanish.Itza is the name of the local Mayan tribe. Like the Native Americans and the Australian Aborigines, years ago children were forced to learn English and forbidden to speak their native language. Still, the Mayan language survived and the locals now practice a mixture of Catholicism with the old traditions.
San Jose is trying to develop itself as a center for herbal medicine production and sale. Their website is

http://www.bioitza.org/. We took a tour of an herbal medicine garden. Steve did a good job of translating the Spanish guide's explanations. We learned, among many other things, that the mother-in-law tongue (snake plant) that we have at home can be crushed into a salve that heals mosquito bites.
The weather has been very cooperative. It usually rains only at dawn. There was a downpour while we were in the medicinal plant garden, but we were next to a palm roofed ramada, and we ducked in there to don our rain gear. The rain ended after 15 minutes. Aside from the gully washer as we boarded the bus in Belize City, we haven't seen any rain. It has been in the 80s and quite nice.

Tikal and Yaxha, Guatemala

2005-12-30T14:46:00.000-08:00

We got off the river trip this morning, got cleaned up, ate some good food, and now I'm in Eva's Restaurant in San Ignacio, on the west side of Belize. They've got some wonderful blues playing and I'm feeling fine.

In the last letter, I said we were planning to see the sunrise from the top of a pyramid at Tikal ("Place of the Voices"). Don't believe it. When the park opened at 6 AM, the sun was already up and we were a long walk from any pyramid. Still, it was a wonderful day.

Tikal is one of the largest excavated Mayan ruins anywhere. It is certainly the most famous, and justifiably so. There is way more than can be seen in a day. We walked through some lovely second growth forested areas that were completely logged by the Mayans. The temples are just spectacular. Built of limestone, they are very steep and were intended to get the Mayans closer to their gods. They were also used for various ceremonies, including human sacrifices. At least, that's what the archaeologists claim, but there are new studies that indicate everything that archaeologists thought they knew about the Mayans is wrong.

Anyway, I climbed four pyramids, the tallest being about 120 feet. They don't let you climb Temple I, the one you see in the photo at Maya Queztal Restaurant in Tucson. Sometimes you climb right up the short-tread, high-riser steps, sometimes you take a staircase that's almost a ladder. The views over the tree tops from one temple to the next were breathtaking. I chanted a mantra together with Daya and Sherri, a couple of women in the group, and we felt vibrations in our chests. There was definitely a magical spirit there.

As I stood at the top of one temple, I saw a vulture standing at the pinnacle of another ruin a half mile away. He had his wings spread and was slowly turning in a circle to face each direction. He seemed to be well aware of the majesty of the place and of himself.

I saw a black headed trogon, a collared aracari (a toucan), rufous tailed jacari, a rufous headed woodpecker and a black vulture. We saw a beautiful rust red coatimundi (a raccoon relative) just 10 feet off the path, eating a possum he pulled out from under a log. He was completely unconcerned about us and kept munching while our cameras snapped.

As you probably know, the Mayans were into solar time in a big way. We were at Tikal the day after the winter solstice. If we had been there on the solstice at sun rise, we would have seen the sunrise directly over a particular marker. Other markers locate the sunrise on the equinox and winter solstice.The Mayan 5,000-year calendar will end December 22, 2012. Venus will pass in front of the sun. I am not sure what will happen then, but I get the impression the Mayans expect it will be big.

There were some modern Mayans in the Grand Plaza burning copal incense and making offerings. Yes, Mayans live among us today, although the Guatemala government killed about 100,000 in the 1980s with the support of the US government. The nearby town of San Antonio is the only town in Belize where everyone speaks Mayan, in addition to Spanish and English. It was also the home of the famous Mayan medicine doctor, Don Elijio Panti, about whom I read in the wonderful book, Sastun. His little concrete block office is right next to the highway, not in the jungle as I pictured.

Steve did not want to get up at 4 AM so he could go get to Tikal with the rest of us at 6 AM. After much delay and confusion caused by our inept tour leader, he was able to get to Tikal around 11 and miraculously, he and I found each other in this enormous park. We ate lunch and then he rushed off to try to find another group from our tour company that just happened to be visiting Tikal in the afternoon. He joined their tour while the rest of us went back to the hotel. He got a much better guide, who showed him about 15 new birds that I would have loved to have seen. Then they saw the sunset from the top of a pyramid. He lucked out in a big way.

We are told that the television show "Survivor" taped a series called "Survivor: Tikal" but it wasn't really taped there. It was taped about 40 miles east at another park called Yaxha (pronounced Yaksha), meaning Blue Green Water. The excavated part of this site is much smaller than Tikal. It was "discovered" by archaeologists about 20 years ago, and the excavation was only started about 12 years ago. It was interesting to see the site in its various stages of excavation and restoration. Mostly the site looks like a lot of closely spaced, symmetrical hills about 50 feet high, sides at about 60 degree slope, and covered with trees. It is amazing to think of a pyramid, and maybe bodies or jade carvings or other treasures under each.

We also saw spider monkeys there. Unlike the howler monkeys, the white faced spiders jump from one tree to another and can hang from their tails, but they are just as entertaining as the howlers.

After Yaxha, we had lunch at the lovely El Sombrero, an open air, thatch roof patio with hammocks, tables, chairs and books. Log sections are set in the floor. There are cabins to rent here. It would be a very relaxing place to stay for a few days. http://www.ecosombrero.com/

Belize City, Belize

2005-12-22T20:10:00.000-08:00

We left Crooked Tree after 4 nights and went to Belize City. As the guide book says, it is not a tropical paradise. Still, there were 2 notable events there. We saw the Swing Bridge in operation. It was amazing. The bridge is an historic structure, maybe the only like it in the world. It is supported by a cylinder under the middle of the bridge. Sail boats can’t get under the bridge, so they line up until someone decides there are enough boats to warrant stopping the car and foot traffic on the bridge so the bridge can be swung parallel to the river and the boats can get through. This is accomplished by putting chains across the road on both sides of the bridge to stop the traffic on the bridge. Then 5 or 10 minutes go by while the bridge operators try to get people to stop running and biking across the bridge. Finally they give up on trying to stop the human stream and about 10 men and a few small boys go to the middle of the bridge, where they have a gigantic, 2 armed key. Half push on one side of the key, half push on the other, and the bridge swings 90 degrees. Still people are running across the bridge as it moves, and squealing as they jump through the quickly narrowing gap between the bridge side walk and the bridge support on the bank. It was pretty cool.

We then saw hundreds of starlings noisily congregating in Battlefield Park for the night. Their almost-deafening, cacophonous whistling and shrieking as they jockeyed for space in the trees and wires was delightful.

We met the members of the guided tour we will be with for the rest of our trip, and took a public bus to San Ignacio. The local busses are old Blue Bird school busses from the US. I may have ridden on one of these as a little girl. Now they are crammed with humanity, luggage and live chickens carried in bags. Fortunately, we didn’t take the chicken bus; we took a somewhat nicer express bus with a luggage compartment underneath. The express only stopped once, at the fruit and vegetable market in the capital city, Belmopan.

There we saw Mennonites, conspicuous among the black and brown faces with their white skin, beards, straw hats and overalls. The Mennonites have been inbreeding since they arrived in the 1950s from Mexico, and their gene pool has gotten too shallow. We are told that a few years ago they took out ads in the paper looking for light skinned mestizos to breed with their young women. We couldn’t find out whether the mestizos were invited to join the community, or were they strictly intended to reduce the incidence of birth defects among the Mennonites.

Once we got to San Ignacio, we were eating lunch on the front porch of Eva’s, and who should drive by but Sam Tillet and two of the birders we met during our stay in Crooked Tree. Talk about a small country.

From there, 12 guests, plus driver and guide were packed like sardines into a small Toyota van. The driver said the van was designed for little Japanese people, not the overgrown Americans and Europeans.

We are pleased that the group is not just Americans. There are also people from Switzerland, France, Belgium, Finland and Canada. The Americans are from NC, NV and of course AZ.

We crossed the border from Belize to Guatemala, and left behind English, miles, roads strewn with trash, Belize dollars and dogs with intact tails and entered the land of Spanish, kilometers, people who take more pride in their country, Quetzales and bob-tailed dogs.

I like Flores, the island city where we are now, a lot. But we are leaving at 5 AM to see the sunrise from the top of the Mayan pyramid at Tikal, so enough for now.
Hasta luego

Lamai and Sam Tillet's, Belize

2005-12-22T18:28:00.000-08:00

On the plane we sat next to a woman who was born in Belize and left when she was 15 to move to the US. She hadn´t been back in 30 years. She was bringing her two teenage daughters to Belize for a month so they could, she said, "experience their heritage¨. At the top of her list of anticipated heritage experiences was a visit to the Princess Hotel in Belize City, which is said to rival anything in Las Vegas. By the sour attitudes of her daughters, we could see they had every intention of getting revenge on their mother for subjecting them to this heritage experience. One of them put her shirt over her nose when she got off the plane. We wonder whether they are still here.

I haven´t counted the new additions to my birding life list, but it´s a lot. Brown jay, clay colored robin, red lored parakeet, aztec jay, tropical mockingbird, collared and magnolia warblers, the aptly named melodious blackbird, yellow headed vulture, ringed kingfisher, blue grey tanager, blue grey gnatcatcher, pale vented pigeon, forktailed flycatcher, black cowled oriole, bare neck tiger heron, black bellied whistling duck, spot breasted wren, jacana, social flycatcher, and the big prize, the gorgeous apricot-colored black collared hawk. I also saw a wood stork, the bird who delivers babies. He has been very busy in Belize.

"Pikni da po pipple riches".
Literally, Children are a poor man’s riches
Meaning, Children are often all that a poor man has a lot of, and having many children is widely regarded as a kind of investment against being helpless in old age.

At night as we sat on that lovely deck at Sam Tillet´s we could see fireflies. Can you imagine, fireflies in December? Their lights seemed to come in various temperatures, because there were blue, white and yellow varieties.

Sam Tillet drove us to the New River, pointing out a yellow headed vulture and a roadside hawk along the way. The roadside hawk is usually on a wire next to the road. Sam pointed out a similar looking hawk at the New River landing and told us it was a riverside hawk, but we could see by his smile he was kidding. We took a high speed, noisy, polluting boat that eroded the shore with its one foot high wake on a 90 minute ride to a Mayan ruin called Lamanai (¨Submerged Crocodile¨). There are questionable aspects to this eco tourism.

Snail kites and anhingas hung out by the river. We saw some wonderful Mayan pyramids, one of which we could see from the boat, towering above the jungle. We climbed that one, about 100 feet tall, and got a great view. We also saw a howler monkey family of 3 adults and a baby doing acrobatics about 20 feet directly above us. They seemed to be showing off, and were as curious about us as we were about them.

Along the river, we passed a Mennonite community called Shipyard. Now numbering 4,000 members, they moved there in the 1950s from Mexico to escape the taxes and military. They are responsible for most of the beans, rice and cheese consumed in the country. They don´t believe in electricity or any of its consequences.

Also at Lamanai was the Give and Take Tree. It has spikes that have a mild poison that causes a painful rash. The tree also provides the cure for the rash, in a substance in its bark.

In several places we have seen leaf cutter ants. They make a trail across a yard or across the hiking path, completely removing all vegetation in a corridor about 4 inches wide. They are carrying parts of leaves back to their nest. The ants are about a quarter inch long, but most carry leaf pieces at least twice as big as they are. If they are transporting green and yellow leaves, it is quite a pretty spectacle as they trudge with their parasols. They follow the path by sense of smell, so if our mean guide Ruben scuffs the path with his shoe, they run around frantically until one ant picks up the scent and gets everyone going the right direction again. In their nest, specialized ants of a different caste are in charge of tending the leaves and cultivating a fungus, which is what the ants eat. They are the world´s first farmers. We even saw them working at night. I think of Ed Abbey´s comment that he never had much respect for ants. The formic life, scoffed Ed.

I was sad that there is plastic trash along all the roads and shores we saw in Belize. The citizens seem to have no respect for their lovely environment. Even Ruben, the guide on our birding walks in Crooked Tree, who has lived in the village all his life, opens a piece of candy and throws the wrapper on the ground. Pathetic dogs also abound. There is a bill board on the highway showing a jaguar washing her kittens. The caption is "Our idea of litter". I hope the citizen education campaign catches on.

At Crooked Tree, most of the guests at Sam Tillet´s were birders. One of the women said her husband was an SOB. Spouse of Birder, which I supposed is not quite as bad as being a football widow, but almost. She noted that birders are compulsive. Some keep lists of birds seen in a county, state, and country, as well as any other imaginable category, like a list of bird observed defecating. She said she even knows of people who keeps lists of birds seen on TV and in movies. One of the saner birders, a lawyer from Houston, told this woman she needed to get a life.

The cook at Sam Tillet´s gave us some delicious plum jam, made from the golden plums in the tree next to the observation deck. We ate the same plums that the kiskadees and blue grey tanagers enjoyed.

I saw a bird called the greyish saltator choking an entire blue morning glory blossom into his mouth as if he were stuffing a parachute. He did it again and again. I guess those flowers are a delicacy to him.

Other new birds spotted at Crooked Tree included ringed kingfisher, jacana, common yellow throat, green kingfisher, and mangrove swallow, as well as birds I’ve seen before: grooved bill ani, American redstart, common ground dove, yellow bellied sapsucker, vermillion flycatcher, little blue heron, great blue heron, green heron, tri-color heron, kingbird, boat tailed grackle, hooded oriole, turkey vulture, rose breasted becard, cardinal, coot, pied billed grebe, lesser and spotted sandpipers, catbird, red winged blackbird, white ibis, limpkin, osprey, killdeer, and great egret. Sometimes the cattle egret also stand on the backs of horses and pick bugs out of their hides. Ruben tried to tell us they were horse egrets, but we weren’t buying it.

Ruben took us on a night walk. We felt like intruders on the animals who were awaken by our flashlights. There’s a nightjar called the common pauraque that sleeps on the road at night. Ruben blinded one with his flashlight and was able to pick him up. The poor bird hissed and showed us the expanse of his huge mouth. Steve and I felt guilty about harassing the critters and decided to refrain from any more nightwalks.

Crooked Tree is named for the cashew for which it is famous. There are also guanacaste trees, which look sort of like a bonsai on a 50´ tall trunk. It´s the tallest tree around. We are not in the jungle. Rather, this is the coastal savannah. There are grasslands and some forests of rather small trees including pines, palms and papayas, and some of the trees have been completely enveloped and killed by strangler figs. Even cactus can grow here. There is a sort of prickly pear under the coconut trees at Sam´s. There is also a parasite called snake cactus that drapes itself in the trees.

Crooked Tree, Belize

2005-12-18T11:07:00.000-08:00

I'm in the office of Sam Tillet's Hotel in Crooked Tree in northeastern Belize. We've been here 3 nights and will leave for Belize City tomorrow. Steve and I had to go through the despicable george bush international airport in Houston on the detestable continental airlines. I recommend you avoid both. The airport in Houston was closed the day before we went through there due to a storm, and there was chaos for the next few days. We arrived in Belize City, and got in line with dozens of other travelers to make a lost baggage claim. None of our luggage or camping gear had arrived. We do not travel light, and feel very attached to every item in our bags. We dreaded the idea of having to buy all new clothing and camping gear. Fortunately, the guided tour doesn't start until Tuesday, so we have 4 days in Crooked Tree to wait for luggage.

Sam Tillet is the most famous birder in Belize, which is why I chose to stay here. He grew up on the property where the hotel is located. There were 11 children in his family and 13 cousins lived next door. Crooked Tree is a remote village of 900 souls located on an island in the middle of a large lake. Most of the houses are cinder block, or poorly constructed wood frame. It's not unlike the poorer parts of Tucson, except the frame houses are on stilts. It is one of the best birding spots in Belize.
The hotel is rustic, built on stilts in the old style of hairy bamboo. We have a palm-thatched roof in our bedroom, which is on the second floor off the balcony. Coconuts trees flank the stairs up to the balcony.The first night here, we awoke to the sound of growling, hissing, crashing and thrashing. Possums were doing battle on the roof. The second night, Steve woke to feel an animal on his head. He brushed it off, and it jumped back on. He got his flashlight and tried to figure out what it was. He couldn't find it. He thought it was a frog, but it may have been one of the geckos that are running around on the ceiling. They look exactly like the geckos in Tucson, but they can bark. Last night the possums were at it again. We wonder what sort of wildlife activity to expect tonight.
There is a lovely deck outside the dining room. There are picnic tables on the deck, and the field beyond has flowering plants and trees that attract an incredible variety of birds. You could spend your whole vacation on the deck and have a fabulous time.

In one of the trees is a gigantic green iguana, about 4 feet long. He is bright orange, and his wife is brown, but their babies are bright green, so that is how they get their name. He is one of the most spectacular beasts I have ever seen. He has thin, 2" orange spikes coming out of his back. He has a huge black and white wattle under his chin with small grey spikes along the edge of that. He also has a few small spikes sticking up on top of his nose just for show. His 2' tail is black and orange bands. Mostly he just lays there at the top of the tree looking magnificent, but occasionally he bobs his head up and down and shakes the upper branches of the tree. He rids the tree of intruders that way. The locals eat the females ("bamboo chicken") and their eggs, but no one eats the males. No one will say why. They just repeat, NO one eats the males.

Two nights ago was the village Christmas tree re-lighting ceremony. The village’s first Christmas tree ever was installed in front of someone’s house across from the community center a few days ago. It was decorated with tinsel and strings of electric lights. The villagers awoke the next day to find that cows had eaten the first tree, and two of the cows had Christmas lights tangled in their horns and they were butting each other. Nobody knew that cows ate pine trees. The villagers tried again with a 5' pine decorated with tinsel, shiny garlands and a star. This time they closed the gates to the fence around the yard, because the cows just wander around the roads. As of yesterday, the tree was still standing. There was a skinny black Santa with a cotton beard on hand to hand out gifts to the children.

It is strange to hear Jingle Bell Rock and Blue Christmas playing real loud on the villagers’ boom boxes. Last night, in addition the possum warfare, we were entertained (not really) until about 2 AM by the sound of karaoke from the bar. Disgraceful mangling of Patsy Cline and Hank Williams tunes, plus deserved destruction of Kenny Rogers songs.

The locals are descended from African slaves. They are mostly very black-skinned. They speak Creole, which is supposedly something like English, but we can rarely catch a word of it. Chewed up words and slang. For example,
"If you kyaa hear, you haffu feel"
Literally: If you can’t hear, you have to feel.
Meaning: Experience teaches those who won’t learn in any other way.

It’s fun to listen to it, and I expect the Creoles like talking about the tourists in front of us. The children learn Creole in school. If they want to go beyond 6th grade and learn proper English, they have to go to private school at the cost of US$2,000 per year. Obviously, very few children do that, so their employment opportunities are limited to fishing and raising cattle and chickens.

The hotel manager is a charming young man about 22 years old named Efrain. He was born in El Salvador, but he and his parents moved to Belize when he was an infant. He has skin the color of iced coffee, a diamond earring, and hair and eyebrows dyed orange. He's very friendly and speaks English with a nice accent. He learned Spanish at home, and Creole in school, so he switches easily between languages. He was one of the lucky ones who got to go to private school. He says the reason they don't teach proper English in the public school is the teachers are lazy, and most don’t know anything but Creole anyway. The government is too cheap to insist on hiring English speaking teachers. He says the government is no good. He also told us that when we see large, fancy houses, we can be sure they are owned by one of the following: politicians, rich Americans, or pastors.

I guess I had better try to send this before the computer crashes.