KIWI BLOG NUMBER 9… THE LAST.

Many vineyards in the Nelson thru Picton area remind us of Okanagan vinyards.

Camped at Otorohanga before turning in our camper van to Auckland airport. Have rented a car for the last 4 days to do a bit of touring on the Coromandel peninsula, then to Herb and Gillian’s and finally, drive to the airport for our departure to Tahiti for 3 days.

We have developed a bad? habit similar to our trips thru the UK and Europe and that is to stop at bakeshops for Danish pastries, or apple strudel, or apple turnovers plus café lattes. I have to go on a diet when I get home. Roadside bakeries are deadly!

We have re-named Ol’ Nell/Betsie to Elvis because she/he does a lot of “Shake, rattle and roll” and is up over 460k kilometres. She (now He) has served us well but… the maintenance checklist when we picked up Elvis was rather slipshod. Elvis overheated badly on some of the mountain passes on the south island. On the way to Morutake,  it overheated again so I turned around and went back to find a service station. The old mechanic (working on a Sunday) helped me find the radiator fill cap (which is not an easy task on the old, old. old, Toyota vans… not an easy thing to do), it took 30 minutes to cool down, and then took almost 4 liters of coolant. (Thank god for growing up on a farm and routine maintenance!). Old Elvis has not overheated since.

A huge cruise ship was in Picton for 2 days so the town was overrun with North Americans and Asians. Caught the 9 am ferry from Picton to Wellington, 

en route,

got caught up on recent happenings from the PGA golf tour from the Riviera club in LA. Spent a couple of hours at Te Papa, the National Museum in Wellington. We only went thru the Gallipoli section of the museum that documented the massive British “cock-up” for which the Aussies and Kiwis paid dearly. There was a Newfoundland regiment wiped out there as well. Sir Winston, vice-chancellor of the Admiralty, was doing his “strategic planning” using outdated tourist maps… don’t figure!

Winston did get something right tho… see quote below in front of a Nelson pub.

You come to realize how badly the colonials were treated by the upper class ( a.k.a. privileged, unqualified, upper class Brits. The infantrymen were told NOT to salute officers as that made the officers a target for snipers. Salute they did… problem solved!

Every village we drive thru has a commemorative statue to the war dead... Boer War, WW1 and WW2; WW1 for the Kiwis ended in 1919 as they were involved in the occupation of Palestine in 1919 under the Balfour Declaration and many Kiwis were killed after 1918 in Palestine. Gallipoli to the ANZACs is akin to Vimy Ridge for the Canadians.The Gallipoli exhibit was very moving, the creator used lifelike, oversize statues, based upon real people with a narrated story; each statue was about 12 feet high with incredible detail. See nurse Lottie Le Gallais. We watched a BBC movie called “Kiwi Girls” last year based upon true stories of the hardships and sacrifices made by  gallantry of the kiwi volunteer nurses.

The area north and west of Wellington along the coast is much like driving through Devon and Cornwall, pastoral, lots of cattle and sheep, corn and productive farms.

The passes thru the mountains are very tiring driving tho.  Curves in tunnels and passes are so sharp, truckers have to watch for oncoming traffic  using convex mirrors.

New Plymouth is a beautiful sea side town with a great walking wall along the malecon. All the towns have British names.

Driving into Stratford, there were US Flags adorning every farmstead and the town was all decked out with US flags. POTUS Donald is arriving to open a new golf course and the town and district is going absolutely wild!

 

That is the fake news for the day (and it DIDN’T come out of Kellyann Conway’s mouth); the real story is at the end of the blog so I’ll keep you on the edge of your seat until then.

Turned in our camper van at Auckland airport and picked up a nice Toyota Corolla, much easier to drive (but much less room). We have a chalet in a camper park in Thames on the Coromandel peninsula and will do some hiking and exploring before driving to Auckland for our last couple of days.

In the campground in Otorohanga last nite, we meet a British couple (David (a builder) and Jenny Flew ( a property manager) who were from Boscastle in Cornwall. I asked him if he knew Middle Beeny Farm where Heather and I stayed in 1995 and 1997; Of course he did… his cousin (also a builder) was renovating the Middle Beeny Farm farmhouse for the new owner. The farmhouse was built in the late 1500s and an addition put on in the 1860s. It was our favourite B&B to stay at in the UK and we celebrated Wendy’s 70^th birthday in 1997. The B&B was run by Wendy and her brother Barry and we really enjoyed our visits with them. David’s father is 88 and knows everyone in the community, so he will check on Wendy and Barry’s whereabouts to give them our regards (that is, if they are still on the right side of the sod) and get back to us. It truly is a small world!

The US flags are celebrating a HUGE  US car rally, the roads into Stratford and area are bumper to bumper with American cars, beautifully restored from the 1930s thru 1980s all travelling at 30 kph to avoid chip damage as most of the roads are under construction with “new seal;” warnings… hot tar with finely divided stones flattened into the tar stone chips flying every direction. It is a 3 day event and thousands of cars are expected. I think we met every chevy from 1936 thru 1980 mostly 55, 56 and 57’s plus lots of Corvettes on the highway into town.

We have sold our house in Camrose,  and bought the beautiful old bus below in Whanganui. moving to kiwi land which will be our new home.

See you all soon back in Canada.