I am sitting in a huge internet room in between members of a Scandinavian family. Blond young daughter is sitting beside me and her parents are a few carrels to my left. Unfortunately she keeps finding things to talk to them about and leaning in front of me to call down to them. She is mostly drowned out by the loud music, though, so it is not so bad. In fact, it is 6:30 PM on a glorious sunny evening with the sun still shining on the sparkly lake, but making shadows of the mountains that rim the tiny town of Queenstown. So, why sit in an internet cafe anyway? I am just checking in, and then I am off to watch the big football game between Wellington and David Beckham and the LA Galaxies. We are eating in tonight so that we can watch the big game. A hot Saturday night in
Queenstown.

We had a wonderful lunch at a neighboring winery. Mediterranean lunch under the grape arbor. In a switch of ordering roles, Mike had the grape pickers platter (my normal order) of soup, bread and spreads like hummus and chutney. I had pasta (maybe my first time since Italy and even there I only ate it once or twice). Heavenly.

We made reservations at our favorite restaurant (Saffron in Arrowtown) for Monday evening to celebrate our 24 year anniversary. Boy does time fly. We will stay in Queenstown until the 6th, when we have a reservation at a little cottage in Arrowtown for the remainder of our trip.

I will write tomorrow and let you know how the football game goes.

Til then,
Deanne

KIWI TV

Those of you who have listened to us enumerate the reasons we love New Zealand over the past twenty years are sure to remember our descriptions of television. Perhaps it is their no-nonsense farming history, but kiwis don't mind showing blood and guts on tv. Years ago we saw news coverage of a shark attack on a swimmer, and the news team went right into the poor bloke's hospital room and interviewed him about the attack showing all his stitches and cuts in full splendor. Kiwis thought nothing of realistic TV. So, we were not surprised the other day when we saw a thirty-something woman dressed in sweatshirt and jeans crying and walking around the streets of a deserted town late at night calling for her lost chihuahua, "Misty". They interviewed her about her love for this little eight year old dog and interviewed a classroom of schoolchildren making up lost/reward signs for this dog. We were properly amazed that a lost dog would get this kind of coverage until a few minutes later when they took the time to remind the audience who this woman was by showing her dressed for work in her skimpy stripper clothes. Apparently New Zealand's most famous stripper lost her dog. There are signs up all over town advertising her lost "chawawa"- nobody said blond strippers have to spell.

What else is on TV? Well, for one the news people don't have to be "beautiful" people. The Morning show is hosted by the blond Rippa lookalike, along with a funny looking man with crooked teeth and funny round glasses that could never be mistaken for Matt Lauer. He was telling a story from the newspaper yesterday that Mike relayed to me (I was in the shower). Mike says you'll never get the humor of it in print, but here goes anyway: One of the New Zealand farmers was working with some piece of heavy equipment that caught his arm. while trying to free his arm, the machine malfunctioned and caught fire. This poor farmer chopped his arm off after partially burning his body. The show host was relaying this story in disbelief. He remembered the famous story of the American mountain climber that hacked off his arm after getting it caught under a boulder, then making his way to safety. He started talking about how ward it is to imagine the how-to's of chopping off your own arm. In working through it verbally, he exploded in laughter and talked about making little "chippie, chippie motions on the bone to get it to cut through". The more he imagined chippie, chippies, the more he laughed. And, because he was so hysterical, the Kelly Rippa lookalike started laughing, and before you know it they were snorting their way through the story.

Today's big news, and I mean BIG news is David Beckham. It has been a tense three or four days as the news as covered him all trough the LA Galaxy's trip to Australia where they played "football" or soccer against an Australia team to the biggest packed stadium (85,000 people) in Australia's history. Well, to make it even better, the Galaxy is coming to Wellington to play against the local Wellington team. The team flew in from Australia yesterday and were met at the airport by the biggest crowd since the Beatles visited New Zealand. Apparently a group of disabled kids were standing by to present Beckham with something they made, and he walked by them without seeing them and the scandal in the press has been huge. He has apologized for the accidental slight and is hosting a private meeting with these kids. He and his team are inviting 10,000 kids from all over NZ Zealand to travel by bus to watch them practice today. The official game is tomorrow night and it will be the only thing happening in all of New Zealand. Apparently Wellington had to pay over a million dollars to get the Galaxy to travel here for this game. I guess we know how they are recouping the $25 million they are paying Beckham in salary. But Bekham mania is alive and well her in New Zealand.

If any of you are Netflix users, we have it on good authority (but, untested as of yet) that the movie, Crackerjack, will give you a funny introduction to the New Zealand game of bowling. In previous columns I have written about our growing appreciation for this SLOW game, but apparently this movie is a funny peak into the game. If you see it before us, let us know.

New Zealand has two terrestrial national television channels. Most of what they show is daily news, British Television shows (Coronation Street) and American television (every crime show we have it seems, plus the worst of the reality shows like the plastic surgery show- the Swan). Over the twenty years we have been coming here, the mix has moved much more to US shows, with fewer British shows on nowadays. There are also satellite stations, including CNN, but only the more upscale places we stay have the satellite stations. For example, at the winery cottage where we stayed, our host Wendy told us that she is such a cricket fan, and cricket matches go for six hours per day for five days running, that she purposely does not subscribe to satellite tv so as to get her work done around the vineyard. And, if she doesn't get to watch it, either do her guests.

Today we arrived in Queenstwon. The New Zealand Open golf tournament is being played here in the little nearby town of Arrowtown where our former condo lies. It is almost impossible to find anywhere to stay, but with a slightly higher budget we landed an apartment on the road into town. We can park our car and walk around from there, which is a nicer way to see Queenstown than having to park everywhere we go. We have a cottage reserved in Arrowtown begin Dec. 6th for the final week of our stay, after the hubbub of the golf tournament is past. For now, golf is the only thing on TV, where we can watch them play golf fifteen miles from where we sit.

'Til Later,
Deanne

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)

FIRE?!?!!!!!!!

As we were sleeping soundly in our little two bedroom home in the wine country, a very loud, powerful alarm/siren went off. It may have been inside our house somewhere, but it is also true that it could have been outside on a pole somewhere. All I can tell you is that it was louder than that obnoxious alarm that goes off when I cook dinner and announces to all of our neighbors that we have something burning at the Handron house, while Mike and I frantically open all the doors and window and fan the ceiling smoke detectors. This New Zealand alarm was horrible, made worse by the fact that we were in a strange house, it was 1:30 in the morning and we had no idea why an alarm was sounding.

Finding no obvious cause we climbed back in bed. Maybe ten minutes later we heard distant sirens, giving weight to our theory that we live in a town with a volunteer fire department that is alerted to a fire by a community-wide alarm rather than an automated phone dialing system. We never did find out what the alarm was, but it wasn't enough to keep two weary travelers awake to worry about it.

After leaving the Hawkes Bay wine country we went to Wellington for a night. Wellington is the capital of New Zealand. Although it has only half a million people,it is a very cosmopolitan city. We were told proudly that there are more coffee houses per capita than any other city. Coming from the town that put Starbucks stores four to a corner we find it hard to believe that statistic, but it does make a point that it is a happening place for coffee affectionados or people out on the town. Keep in mind though, that kiwis version of out on the town differs completely from Europe. The streets roll up at 6:00 PM in most towns, and in a "big"city like Wellington you can expect to find places open until ten or so. So different from Spain where you won't find a restaurant open until ten.

Wellington was just an overnight on our way to the ferry from the North Island to the South Island. The ferry crossing is three hours long, and residents take their cars across. Visitors turn their cars in at the ferry terminal where Avis and Hertz conveniently have rental offices, then pick one up on the other side after crossing. It works well, as there are people f\driving to the crossing point from both islands, turning in their cars for pick up by someone coming across on the next ferry.

We had beautiful weather for the crossing (it has been outstanding all along). The top end of the south island is the Marlborough sounds, and it is gorgeous. A bit like the fiords, but the mountain sides are not as tall. Our Toyota was waiting for us and we took off. Less than an hour later we were in the middle of the Marlborough wine region, home of wonderful white wines. Having such success renting a cottage last time, we headed straight for the information office where we were able to get another cottage for $100 NZD per night, or roughly $78US. It is two bedroom, two bath sitting in a vineyard. It is immediately adjacent to our hosts'home, although hedges separate the entrances and provide us with privacy. Our hosts are two women who run an assortment of businesses, including the vineyard (they grow grapes under contract for one of the local wineries), a wine tasting tour company and other things we have not yet discovered. They have a white lab that they offered to loan me when I asked for advice on where to roam for my walk. That is real service...a dog to accompany you on your walk! They made reservations for us at the local hot spot and have provided us with lots of advice about where to go. Although we didn't expect any services to our unit during our two night stay, we returned to our cottage to find clean towels after a day of touring the wineries and chocolate factory (yes, MaryAnn, we are keeping up our medicinal doses of chocolate by visiting the boutique chocolate shops of New Zealand).

Chocolate in New Zealand is very creative and wonderful. Because we are partaking for purely medicinal reasons (similar to the wine drinking) we are only eating dark chocolate (except for an occasional venture into white chocolate by Mike to prove that dark chocolate isn't the only source of health). We have found dark chocolate flavored by wonderful additions such as coffee, ginger, cardamon, saffron....

Well, I have worked myself into a hunger. So, I will log off this internet cafe machine and go find some coffee, wine or chocolate to take the edge off.

Take care,
Deanne

It is just like Home

As we were cooking breakfast this morning in our little three bedroom rental cottage Mike looked over at me and said, "this is just like home", at which point I said, "who wants it to be just like home?". We have a little home to overselves, and it does feel just like home when you are doing the dishes and cleaning up after yourselves. What are the differences from home aside from the obvious things like no family around?

First of all, kiwis have on/off switches on all of their electric outlets and they use them religiously. So, when you want to turn on the kettle to boil water for your coffee you have to turn on the outlet and turn on the kettle. Same with the stove. You turn the switch on at the wall first. I am not sure why it exists this way, but even the hotels are like this. The only exception I have seen is for the televiaion, which in most places seems to be in the permanent on position.

Secondly, although rental houses and kiwis houses all seem to have washing machines virutally no one except hotels use clothes dryers. Given the fine economic shape the country is in I doubt it is because they cannot afford them. I think the prefer line dired clothes. So, yesterday when we arrived at our rental house I had to take our towels off the line, then later when our clothes came out of the machine I had to hang them on the line to dry. As a result our clothes are fresh, but a little wrinkly.

Third, all rentals everywhere include milk. Kiwis are huge milk drinkers. Apparently Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's soon to be ex-wife recently was in a set of ads talking about how cows are ruining the environment and we might as well be drinking rat milk, it was so preposterous to drink the milk of an animal. The newspapers here have roasted her, taken her comments out of context ("she proposes we all drink rat milk") and invited anyone to come see a beautiful dairy farm in New Zealand and see that they are clean and beautiful. When you check into a moetel, rental, hotel, whatever, you get a small refigerator with milk and a tea making set (kettle, teabags, sugar, etc) so that you can enjoy your daily cuppa. It is very nice.

Well, someone has come into the library in search of my machine so I have to log off. We are going to Wellington tomorrow in search of a hotel with 24 hour access to the internet so I can finish uploading my phots. Until then...
Deanne

Soaking up the sun (and wine) in the Wine Country

We have found another area of New Zealand that we love. Having never visited the North Island south of Rotorua, we were very pleasantly surprised to find the Hawkes Bay wine area to be like an undiscovered Napa Valley. It is beautiful weather (warm and sunny) combined with gorgeous scenery (vineyards, rolling hills and the most magnificent beach anywhere) and wonderful New Zealand hospitality. We stayed for two nights in a little village called Havelock North near Napier. We can't stop raving about this village. Set up in a spoke and wheel configuration, the center of town is a memorial to WI veterans and a surrounding traffic circle(more on that later). Around the traffic circle are little streets with small shops. About a block off the traffic circle are the motels and larger shops like the grocery store and the cinema. We were in a motel right off the circle within walking distance to everything. We loved walking to dinner and had a wonderful meal at the hip place in town, Diva.

So, to explain traffic circles. Everyone in Europe and Australia New Zealand drives them and we are not quite sure why they don't exist in the US. They are a very efficient method for getting traffic through an intersection. You pull up to the traffic circle, look to your right, and if it is clear, you pull out into the circle and make your way to the first street if you are turning left, the second if you are going straight, the third if you are making a right and all the way to the fourth if you are doing a U turn. It works remarkably well.

The beach that we loved is called by the original name of Ocean Beach. You drive to it from town through the vineyards, with the last mile on a gravel road. When you get in sight of the ocean you see a one lane road down a major hill to get to the beach. The view from the top of the hill is amazing, which you will be able to see as soon as I can post my photos. The beach is white sand and aquamarine colored water with no buildings for miles. There is one small village of cottages, but it is being torn down. It is gorgeous. We were there with perfect weather and shared this amazing beach with a few middle aged surfers, one family and a few straggler sunbathers.

After two days in paradise we left this morning and headed down the coast to the next stop, also a wine area called Martinborough. We rented a three bedroom home (great photos to come) right off the town square for less per night than our motel room in the last town. Even though the kiwi dollar has increase3d in value relative to our dollar we are still finding housing for substantial savings over our 100 euro per night budget that we set when we left for Europe in July.

We know that it is Thanksgiving at home, so we called all five of the children today. We missed "the boys" which everyone in the family knows is Matt and Jonny. Michael and Dana were having a nice dinner at home and were making up a leftover plate for Matt who was busy working at the casino today. We hope that means he gets Christmas off. Jonny is in Whistler for the week on a vacation with his girlfriend, Megan's family. Megan is coking dinner for nine people and we caught her alone during the time she had allocated for stuffing the turkey which she delayed to talk to us. Caitie reported that turkey dinner in the dorms was a major disappointment but that she and one of her roommates were spending the weekend close to the dorms to nurse her friend back to health.

So, for all of our friends, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are very grateful to have such wonderful friends and family and count our blessings daily.

With love, Deanne

Back in New Zealand again!

We left Cairns last night at 11:00 PM after a delicious dinner in a Greek restaurant. It turns out that there are lots of Greek immigrants in Australia. Melbourne has the largest Greek population outside of Athens. Megan and Matt introduced us to Greek food after their year in Athens, so we were not novices anymore and we enjoyed our dinner.


the Air New Zealand flight was full, but comfortable. It was a four hour flight, but with the time change we arrived at 6:00 AM, which means we basically didn't get any sleep last night. We rented our car in Auckland and headed south, towards the town of Hamilton. Mike has the knack for left side of the street driving now, so aside from the occasional time when one of us walks to the wrong side of the car to climb in, we are making our way smoothly. It was about a three hour drive from the airport to Rotorua, but we stopped in Hamilton for breakfast. By the time we arrived in the "Roto-vegas", the motto/nickname provided by the new horrible marketing campaign for this wonderful little town. It is the center of Maori culture, with large parks and shows available to the public to teach us about the indigenous people of New Zealand. It is also on a lake, so there are lots of the lake activities. Finally, it is a thermal area, with boiling mud, sulphur smelling air and geysers. Why in the world they thought people would be more inclined to visit it with the Vegas comparison is beyond me.

We checked into a $99 NZD a night motel (that is about $78 US) which has its own hot tub (you fill it up yourself- water is plentiful here), kitchenette, starter carton of milk to flavor your tea, and oldish but comfortable furnishings. Even better, for $12 NZD we get two hours of wifi computer access, something I have been waiting for so that I could upload my photos to this blog site.

After a short nap we walked around town a bit. It is a glorious day which is particularly welcome after the oppressive rain and humidity of Cairns. The government gardens is a beautiful park in the center of the city that is about 100 years old. In the British style it has bowling lawns and croquet. We enjoyed walking around, seeing the rose garden and enjoying the weather.

We have a list of the top ten restaurants in New Zealand, and if we can, we will try to have dinner tonight in the only one on the list located here in Rotorua. More on that tomorrow maybe.

Bye,
Deanne