Updates on everything

Traffic Circles: From the assorted e-mails we are getting it is clear that there is no consensus on traffic circles. In fact, if I were to summarize what you are telling us, it seems that Americans don't like traffic circles at all. Probably because US traffic circles don't come with driver's training. The people here are very accustomed to "a_____s" from America (Mike's words) that they enter traffic circles very carefully. So, they feel pretty safe here. Mike stands by his original position that they speed up the intersections in town and make driving much smoother.

Loud fire sirens: We still don't know what the loud city-wide siren is. As we were sitting in the internet cafe in the next town we visited another similar citywide alarm sounded. I leaned over to the twenty-something girl next to me and asked her what the siren was. I loved her answer, "I don't know. It goes off all the time and I never knew what it was for". We aren't talking a little noise. This is a booming siren like the one that would cause you to run to the fall-out shelter if you lived in New Zealand during the London bombings in WWII.

Chocolate: Mike said that I forgot to tell you his favorite chocolate flavor...paprika. Dark chocolate with paprika as flavoring. He couldn't find nutmeg chocolate but asked the proprietor of the shop to consider it, so if you ever visit the Shoc Chocolate shop in Greytown, New Zealand check to see if Mike's nutmeg flavor was ever put into production. In Bleheim we visited another chocolate factory (can you feel the pounds going on? Well, can you?) that specialized in nuts and fruit covered in chocolate. So, we had to buy a little of everything to make sure it was all good. We have dark chocolate macadamia bark (think toffee), white chocolate (Mike eats that stuff), macadamia nut caramel corn..... We are eating all of this so that you can know the best places to visit on your trip here and for health reasons (those antioxidants) so we will return to the US VERY healthy. VERY.

Wine. We have been hitting all of the wine regions of New Zealand on this trip. In Belnheim (pronounced by the kiwis as Blen'em) we stayed in a cottage in a vineyard and spent an hour this morning with hostess, Wendy walking around the vines learning about care and feeding of the vines. She also threw in her wisdom about wines. We toured several wineries yesterday (Cloudy Bay, one of the most famous of the NZ labels and source of good natured resentment among all of the kiwis for their success; Nautilus and Allan Scott where we had a lunch). The tasting room at Nautilus was wonderful, with a solid ten bottles lines up to taste, of which we did justice to them all in order to not have them feel bad. Delightful. The Marlborough region is home to fifty wineries with true odd kiwi names like Dog Point, Mud House, Monkey Bay and Big Sky. We are trying them all, one by one, so that we can advise you all how to order New Zealand wines that are impossible to purchase in the US.

Meals. The New Zealand dollar is the only currency we have hit in our travels that still provides a somewhat favorable treatment to the US dollar. We can have a nice restaurant meal for diner at $120 NZ which is about $85 US dollars. That may sound like a big bill, but when you compare that to Switzerland, or even Italy, it is a bargain. We are still eating breakfast in our room, usually oatmeal. We usually have lunch or dinner picnic style, with one restaurant meal per day. Overall, the quality of the meals is terrific and we are eating lots of iron rich steak and some awesome seafood like green lipped mussels. We have visited two apiaries and carry around a couple of bottles of honey and a jar of peanut butter. Lunch or mid-day snacks are soya and linseed bread with a PB and honey topping. A big splurge might include a banana on that sandwich. We are here in strawberry season, so most nights we have desert in our room; strawberries and chocolate. Heavenly.

The Weather: We have had cyclones (Cairns) and hot (Portugal) but now we have perfect. Every day we wake up to sun and perfect temperatures. We haven's needed to break out our jackets even once, nor have we been so hot that we needed our summer skimpy clothes (thank goodness after the chocolate!)

Current Events. We are sitting on the second floor motel walkway, where we have a table and chair set up in front of our door. We have just finished our latte they made us upon check in. I am working on my laptop with wireless network access. The washing machine is cranking away on our clothes. Mike is sitting beside me editing my thoughts as I write this. We are surrounded by neighbors in our full house motel. Tomorrow is the beginning of a senior citizens tennis tournament (65 and older) and this appears to be Geezer Central. However, I must tell you that they don't actually look so bad. I had to empty the clothes washer to put our stuff in, and those geezer undies looked pretty racy. In fact, geezer Mama has them hanging on the public clothes line outside the laundry room. (I am putting mine in the room! We are in the town of Ashburton and having a geezer good time.

All the best,
Deanne (and editor Mike)