Playing with a Pensioner

Frank arrived early in the day on the 29th, tired but happy to be here. I quickly got him into retiree mode, as you'll see from the photo!

We spent the rest of the week relaxing around Devonport. We saw the Narnia movie one night, which we really enjoyed (especially as you can take beer and wine into the movies here!). On Friday we chased down a used car, a white 1998 Nissan Sunny imported from Tokyo, with low mileage (57,000k) for about $7200 NZ, taxes and fees all in (about $6,000 CDN). The dealer will probably buy it back from us in May. The license plate is DCH460, so I have named it "the Sunny Duchess" to help me remember the plate so I can find it in a parking lot! It seems to run fine, and my cousin Chris has written that his has been reliable for years, so we'll hope for the same.

New Year's Eve was spent with Wendy's sister Deb and her husband Henke at a nice Thai retaurant, and then we watched the Auckland fireworks from their front porch. From pictures John has sent, it looks as if our clan had a happy time, too!

On Monday, Jan 2, we left our beautiful three bedroom house-sit and moved into a miniscule apartment in Auckland, on the 11th floor of The Columbard, which bills itself as a 'corporate crash pad.' The entire apartment could fit inside our dining room at home, but has everything we need: double bed, two-burner stove, microwave, little fridge, sink, and cooking/eating utensils. The bathroom is a marvel of ingenuity--to shower, you simply pull a plastic curtain around one corner and go for it! There's even a washer that doubles as a dryer tucked into one corner.



We have been exploring downtown Auckland, as the apartment is only a block from the main drag (Queen St.) and in sight of Auckland's famous Skytower landmark. We have walked around the Auckland Domain (beautiful park) and visited the Winter Garden conservatory and the Fernery, the Museum (great special exhibit on Da Vinci's machines), and the Art Gallery. We have also been finding the secondhand book stores and adding to our collection of gardening, motorcycle, and airplane books--I think we'll have to send a box home ahead of us at some point! Today we plan to visit another garden, the Eden Garden, which is built inside a former quarry on top of Mt. Eden, a defunct volcano (lots of those here--plus one that last blew in 1995!).

Auckland is a lovely city, but it is a city, and we are ready to move on. Tomorrow we head out for the 2-day drive down to our next home, on the South Island. It is a cottage on the shores of the Otago Penninsula, which curls out into the sea just below Dunedin. It is quite remote, but boasts albatross (those things are HUGE! I saw stuffed ones in the museum), penguin, and seal colonies. Quite a change from here--the screaming of gulls will be preferable, I think, to the screams coming from the bungy-car jump just outside our apartment every night (amusing on night one, slightly less so each night since...). The 3-hour ferry between the North and South Islands is surprisingly (gulp!) expensive--$220 NZ ONE WAY for the two of us and the car. If I had known this, I don't think I would have planned TWO trips in our time here--oh well, we keep telling ourselves that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity...and the GST is included...and the NZ dollar gives us $1.20 CDN.... In the end, we will 'just do it' and count ourselves blessed to be able to do so.

There is internet in our next home, so we will stay in touch. Cheers to all for now!