It was a lovely day and we took a walk along the Otaki River, which is very near to us. It is our fishing river.
We are also on the coastal side of a mountain range, the Tararuas. They are snow capped in the winter and are often shrouded in clouds. Today, they were wearing a low cloud blanket.
The moon was following us too.
I may have written about the pink stump before but here it is again. This is a landmark on our beach. It even shows up on Google maps. About three months ago it got a fresh coat of paint and a stained glass marker. It is remarkable that this thing has not moved despite strong storms. I have asked people the history and no one really knows except that it has been here forever.
The All Blacks, New Zealand’s famous rugby team, is known as one of the best rugby teams in the world. Alas, they have fallen on hard times and are not quite the best any more. They get beat. Often. Right now it is the South African Springboks who are the top of the world and the current world champions. We went to see the famous All Blacks play South Africa in a critical game in the world championship pursuit.
Just to start off, here is their haka:
After the haka, the game went downhill for the All Blacks. Apparently, the Wellington stadium is not good luck for the team and they suffered the worst defeat in their history at the hands of the mighty Springboks, a 43-10 rout. Admittedly, I still do not know the rules of rugby. But when you have a guy sitting behind you that talks like a color commentator, well, I could follow along. I keep vowing to pay more attention to rugby because I do find it fun to watch. But that would require me to watch television and it just is not happening. Maybe someday….
Christmas comes in the summer here so there is never a good reason to enjoy the Christmas winter traditions like warm fires, hot chocolate and snow. Greytown has a Christmas in July festival every year and we finally got our act together to take part in the celebration. It was a madhouse. The street was jammed with families, kids running, adults moving haphazardly. It was a rush-hour-on-the-subway crush of humanity. We were unable to find any information on the schedule or even a map. So, we wandered around aimlessly taking in the craft booths and the crowd energy. Here we are with the mascots:
We did manage to get into the area where they make it “snow.” Well, okay, it is soap bubbles but it is the thought that counts. Unfortunately, we did not act promptly enough to get food and by that time we were looking for dinner, all of the restaurants were full and the food trucks had nothing but crumbs. We drove over to Martinsburg for a nice dinner in a calm restaurant and vowed, boy, we will never do that again.
We went to the World of Wearable Art Show or WOW as it is known, a design competition. This was our third year. The idea is to have artists create wearable art-extremely complex costumes in answer to a specific theme. There is also an open competition where they can let their imaginations go wild. The designers come from all over the world. The pieces are often made of everyday materials that you would never think of as something to create from. For example, this year, there was a piece made completely from straws. It was spectacular. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to photograph the show but every year The Atlantic Magazine does a photo spread. What we are allowed to do is take pictures of wearable art from past seasons. Here are two examples.
The first highlights one of the problems with the show. The audience cannot really get a sense of the incredible detail of the work. This particular piece was in response to an environmental theme. When we saw it in the show last year, we could not tell that the legs were covered with moths. But to look at the detail now, wow (no pun intended).
This second one was one of my favorites. This piece is made entirely of crocheted granny squares. Loved it!
This show is one of the few really interesting things to do in Wellington and we look forward to it every year.
New Zealand is in an area of the Earth known as the Roaring 40’s, a reference to the latitude of the islands. In this area of the planet, the winds roar. Sorry Chicago, but you have nothing on Wellington, which is considered the windiest city in the world. Located on the Cook Strait, a narrow body of water between the North and South Islands, the city gets pummeled by winds that are forced through that tunnel. Our house is located on the West Coast just north of Wellington. With Kapiti Island just across from us, we also have an added narrowing that gives the winds more lift. So if the winds come in, we get hammered. Usually, I don’t mind. I like listening to the ocean crashing. When it gets going, it really does sound like a freight train.
But this late winter early spring season has been particularly brutal, with days and days of strong or gale force winds. High ocean waves roll in, and rain pelts the windows. Out on the beach, the birds fly sideways, the wind impeding their progress. Trees are whipping and leaves are torn from the branches.
As I write this, the winds are tearing around the house. The gusts sound similar to a blizzard–the impatient roar as it tries to make its way around objects. Often it will blow all night, the house creaking.
The strangest phenomenon is how our mind is trained to interpret the sound. In the U.S., where I come from, when we hear wind like this, we are hearing a blizzard. Our natural instinct is to assume the air is going to be cold. Here it can be a warm wind from the tropics, or it can be an Antarctic wind from the south. And the direction can change in a moment, meaning it can be warm for a while and then freezing within minutes. Good luck figuring out what coat to put on or if you need one at all. Going out in it is not fun.
And then one day it stops and all is quiet. These are days when there is not a sound. The birds sing and the ocean sound is a calming whoosh.
It is late winter and the young lambs are being born. I will never tire of seeing these adorable babies. And I am not the only one who feels that way. The other day I sat at the window and watched a toddler who had brought her young lamb to visit the beach. Now I have seen dogs. And I have seen horses. But never a lamb. She did not have it on a leash, and it was being completely uncooperative because it was too busy eating grass. So she tried to pick it up and carry it toward the beach. The lamb was as big as her. She pulled it up putting her hands in its armpits( Do lambs have arm pits? Leg pits?). The lamb’s body stretched to the ground. She stumbled along, as the lamb’s legs kept getting tangled in her own. She finally gave up and left it to graze while she ran toward the ocean. Mom came back and picked it up. They disappeared over the dune, and I never did find out if the lamb went into the water.
During the winter the heating situation in NZ is well, …challenging.
I am shivering, absolutely shivering. My home weather station tells me that it is 4C outside, a balmy 39F, and inside it is 17C (62F) and in the kitchen, it is 15C or 59F. Why is my house so cold? Did the electricity go off? No, it is something much worse, something unbelievable in this day and age but here we are. It seems that many or even most houses in New Zealand–like the one we live in–have no central heating system. Huh?
Yes, no heating system. It might be a relic of the old days when energy was expensive and people were hardy. Maybe it is something British. Gosh knows when I watch British television shows everyone always looks cold. I am not really sure. But the standard here is to heat the house by room, mainly the room that everyone occupies, the living area, and the rest of the rooms are either unheated or are heated as needed. How do Kiwi’s stand this? They are taught it from a young age and the answer is very practical—put on a sweater and close the curtains. You’ll get used to sitting inside without heat if you are dressed as if you are outside.
For us, this is insane. It is cold! Who wants to sit around in outdoor winter clothing? When we first moved here, we lived in a house that had radiators on the walls. They seemed pretty modern. But we soon learned another truth about NZ houses. The windows are kind of useless. In the house with the radiators, it should have been warm, but the windows were the original from say the 1940’s—wooden frames, single pane, and leaky as hell. Wellington is windy and the breeze coming through the closed windows actually rattled the blinds. It was cold. Simple as that. I had to sit next to the radiator to keep warm.
When we first moved into our current house, the only source of heat was a 25 year-old gas stove, a fake fireplace, that sat in the living room. It was downright scary. To turn it on you had to wait for the gas to flow through the line and then let the electric starter click. It clicked and clicked and clicked until boom! The now flowing gas ignited and the flame would burst out. It was terrifying. The fan rattled so loud we could barely hear the television.
We complained to the management about the danger of the stove. The gas fitters would come by, do their checks and certify that it was perfectly safe. I had a sense that they did not want to say it needed to be replaced because that would cost the landlord an arm and a leg. So they tried to clean it up and make it run better just to reassure me which it most certainly did not do. It was obvious that the stove simply needed to be taken out and shot.
Of course, setting aside its safety, one gas burner stove had no capacity to heat the entire house which meant the rest of the house was unheated– no heat in bedrooms, no heat in bathrooms. Our only option was to go out and buy space heaters for each room. It does work but it is expensive. Electric is not cheap here. So we tried to use the gas stove and just supplement with heaters. In the end, we were cold all of the time.
The manager defended the situation saying New Zealand only requires that one room be warm. Let’s contemplate that for a moment. If you rent a home, all the landlord needs to do is make sure one room is heated. What the hell is that? I finally contacted the owner directly and said, hey, we are cold. The guy lives in Texas so he at least understands central heating and cooling. He ordered the manager to arrange for heat pumps.
Now, I hate heat pumps. That name is a misnomer. If it is moderately cold, say in the 40’s, then it works okay. It isn’t forced air natural gas heating for sure. (God, how I miss that!). But when we get down to cold, the 30’s say, the pumps struggle and I find myself sitting under a cool breeze. I hate that! Even worse, they installed two heat pumps that are fashioned like room air conditioners. There is no vent system to spread the warmed air around the house. With one pump for the first floor, and one for the second, the house stays moderately warm. I no longer need to wear three layers of clothes. But because of the lack of venting, the unit on the second floor, located in a stairwell, does not heat any of the rooms. Add to that the fact that the windows in this house are old, singled-paned and leaky, I often find the bedrooms have fallen to the high 50’s, low 60’s. Brrrr. I know my brother would not mind this, but I am sorry. We like a warm house. So, we are back to using room heaters.
We are not alone. While this is perfectly normal for Kiwis, I have heard people like us, who have moved here from other countries, talk about the lack of heat with bafflement and, if not anger, a bit of fuming. The question is always the same, what is up with the heat? There is never a good answer.
So for all of you facing winter, think of how we spend winter here and thank your lucky stars for the heat in your home. In fact, turn it up!
While it was winter here in New Zealand, summer was full on hot in the U.S. and frankly I was looking forward to real summer heat. That just does not exist here. In New Zealand, if the temperature makes it up to the low 80s, they are complaining.
It had been two years since we were in the United States. (I know that sounds like a long time but when you are a senior citizen, the years just blows by.) We decided it was time for a visit back home. My sister was planning an all-hands-on-deck family gathering and we were on our way. We were staying in Annapolis as a sort of central point for Matt to go to some business meetings and see his family and for me to get some things done and to see my family.
So, after two years, how did it feel? The same but also very different. My first impression was, wow, people sure are angry and filled with attitude. Geeze. It felt like everyone was in a snit. I certainly understand why everyone is angry. But it pervaded the atmosphere. In New Zealand, few are angry (I’d say the indigenous folks are often not happy). But there is nothing here that really riles people up. Now I know some of you will say, wow that is great. Yes, but it can also be pretty numbing.
My second impression came when I drove on a highway for the first time in two years. The aggressiveness really put me on alert. I know we drive with speed in the D.C. area. But it felt like another magnitude. Going 70 made me the slowest person on the road. New Zealand is very different. People here think they are crazy, aggressive drivers. It is kind of quaint, and we have a good chuckle about it when it comes up. The reality is that they drive like maniacs on back roads where there is little room for error and they drive slow and steady on open highways. One reason is that the fines and penalties for speeding or doing anything suspect are harsh. Matt and I both learned our lesson after being pulled over for speeding. Basically, you pay a stiff fine and you get points based how far you are above the speed limit. That is normal. But if you get caught speeding three times in a five-year period, they take your license away. That will cause most people to chill.
Once we got our bearings, we did exactly what we came to do: buy stuff we can’t get in New Zealand and usually can’t be shipped here. By that I mean beer and wine. There are certain beers and wines we wish we had but are simply not available in New Zealand. We set aside a day of our trip to visit our favorite stores to stock up. I brought home a case of beer and a half case of wine. Yes, alcohol was at the forefront of our minds.
Then there were the many, many stops at CVS for sundries. Many items we might buy off the shelf in the U.S. are restricted or not available in NZ. If we want these things we have to get them shipped usually by Amazon and that is not cheap. So we stuffed our suitcases. For example, in NZ you need a prescription to get Sudafed. There are no cough suppressants here. They don’t have Benadryl. For me, I have certain skin allergies and I require fragrance free products. Those are pretty rare in New Zealand. So I cleared the CVS shelves of lotions and potions that I could use. When I asked my doctor here if lidocaine patches were available in NZ (I can’t remember why), she was stunned that such a thing even existed. So into the suitcase it went. I can’t even remember everything we lugged back but we were at the CVS just about every day because we would remember another thing we wished we had at home.
And then there was savoring foods that we cannot get in NZ. The grocery stores in the U.S. are marvels of abundance and variety and that just does not exist here. Everyone needs to appreciate this. The most important objective in my mind was cheese, one of my food groups. We bought a huge hunk of idiazabal cheese from Spain. Oh, the rapture. I savored American watermelon. They have watermelon here, but it just does not come up to the standards with which I assess watermelon. And peaches. God bless South Carolina and Georgia peaches!
We also visited family and friends on our trip and we loved seeing everyone. My sister’s family barbecue was a great time. She managed to get 95% of us in the same place, a minor miracle. Here we are:
On the 4th of July we had a fun time with Matt’s family. And we even managed to see the fireworks in Annapolis.
So it was a good trip all around. But exhausting. The trip takes 32 hours door to door so it is not for anyone impatient with travel.
A Yank Among the Kiwis 