Saturday, April 26, 2008
I'm not in Kansas now,
..but i was this morning. This is the view out of my hotel window, Kansas on stormy spring morning. At lunchtime I got on the 737 and flwe west for an hour and bit to Denver, warm and windy under a big sky. Then it was up and over the snowy Rocky Mountains and then my favorite leg across the red rock country of Colorado, the dunes of death valley and finally the megopolis of LA. Now I'm in the Koru lounge 11 hours after I left the hotel this morning and with 15 hours to go to get home. The trip to Kansas was fo the annual meeting between the American Airworthiness Authority and ourselves, Canadians, Australian and our counterparts in Europe, so we all met halfway around the world.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Wedding of Tony and Emma
Right now all this tripping around was actually in aid of getting to the Wedding of Jack's brother Tony and Emma. Here they are on their wedding day on Waiheke Island in ahh,,, another storm!
Guy and Ben (2nd cousin) were page boys, escorted in by Emma's sister Clare. Ben is 5 1/2 months older than Guy and it was really nice to see them playing so well together as they don't often get to be in the same place. Guy looks like he is trying to pull himself up to Bens' height, actually I think he said he was "being a back engine" and "shunting Ben!"
Things to do in the Bay of Islands
As described earlier we arrived in the Bay of Island during a downpour. We pulled into Kawakawa to check the map and pulled up outside the restored railway station, Guy the little train nut was rapt and as we scurried into the staion tearooms for coffe and lunch he kept explaining tome that the little diesel locomotve was 'Mavis' an the other rusty red one was 'Salty' both diesel engines from the Thomas the Tank Engine saga. It was raining two hard to ride down the mainstreet of Kawakawa in the open railway carriages but we went back later when the rain stopped. Th e train runs twice a day through the mainstreet of town. But Guy wasn't satified with that, he wanted to explore the rest of the railway on foot. It is temprarily closed and being used as a footbridge after the towns real footbridge was washed away in ...ahh floods.
And when we weren't mucking about on trains, we were in the water, (urapukapuka again)
Friday, April 11, 2008
Urupukapuka
In the middle of the Bay of Islands is the island of Urupukapuka. (say it uru-puka-puka) It is a reserve run by the the Department of Conservation and has no permanent residents apart from the sheep, which makjs it a perfect place for a picnic. We landed at Otehei bay. As we were walking along the wharf the crew from the yellow submarine (semi-submersible) convinced us to take a ride out to see the fish. It was a really great expereinece for Guy, here he is looking out at the schools of sapper coming alongside the submarine to be fed. It was actually great value.
Then we walked over the hill for a picnic at this secluded bay on the eastern side of the island. Guy wanted to walk most of the way there and back, here he climbing up the hil on the way back. A another magic day.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Picnics in Paradise
You could be forgiven for assuming the purpose of this blog is to share photos of our son with our wider firends and family. Actually it was sort of intended to be wider than that, to detail and record all of the things that we as a family are doing, thinking and experiencing. It just happens that for the last two years almost everything we have done has involved Guy, or the good bits anyway. Nonetheless there has been another aspect and that is to record and acknowledge the wonderfulness that is all around us. I hope you can see what I mean in these pictures.
The ferry boat shown in the last post took us to the town of Russell which is on a penisula in the Bay of Islands. We walked a kilometre or so over the narrow neck of land to this beach. Here's a photo from the 'summit' looking back (west) toward Russell and across the water to Paihia on the mainland. Over on the ocean beach, Guy spent a lot of time exploring the coarse grainy sand and then took me by the hand to negotiate the rock pools out at the point, 'There's a waterfall!'" he kept exclaiming as the small waves splashed up and drained off the fissured rocks.
Looking out at this Bay, I recalled , from travelling across it, that most of the world doesn't look like this at all. To a first approximation, most of the world is hot, flat and dusty, the rest of it is cold, flat and swampy. The bits that are nice are mostly full of people, and the half nice bits, have people fighting over them. So just how lucky are we? to sit in the shade of a mighty Morton Bay fig tree, eating marmite sandwiches and watching the endless interplay of small waves and smaller boys, backlit by an empty shimmering sea. It's what Rudyard Kipling meant when he described New Zealand as 'last, loneliest, loveliest' .
The sunset, from Ken & Kerry's after the storm.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Rainy North
After Rob and Kristas we travelled up to the Bay Of Islands. Unfortunatley we arrived just as a big tropical storm moved in and dumped rain all over Northland. Luckily we were driving Margaret's Toyota RAV4 and we put it's 4WD ability to use when the river along one of the back roads rose up.. Here is a blurry picture looking outthe back window at the 100m long section of flooded road, even Guy looked a bit serious at this point.
The next day it continued to rain so we stayed hiding In Ken & Kerrys holiday home. Finally it cleared to a beautiful day and we took the ferry from Pahia to Russell, see how brown the water is from all the rain.
