Sunday 16 August 2015

Back home

Back in Guernsey, we were met at the airport by dear Wendy with a 'care package' of groceries and a meal ready for tired and hungry travellers. So thoughtful, like Renee, her dear mother. Rosanne (Wendy's daughter) was on our flight from Gatwick and had texted her mother, so Wendy was forewarned. Blown away by her love, so blessed. And our dear friend from our home group was there to meet us and take us home...

We then endured two days of torrential rain which lasted, on one of the days, the whole day. Summer in Guernsey = winter in New Zealand. Fortunately, the sun has now come out, the grass has dried off and we are able to get out and about again.

In the meantime: jet lag got over, unpacking completed, washing done, tidying up begun, emails caught up on....

And today: dog walk, swim, cycle to church, cycle up the hill to Fermain, cycle all the way down to Fermain Bay then push the bike all the way up again....

....for a lovely long catch-up lunch with these dear friends:
Ruth, Wendy, Graham, Nicholas...only missing dearest Renee.

Thursday 13 August 2015

Last Post

The Last Post. Well, obviously - hopefully - not the very last post here, just the last one from our most recent NZ adventure.

So, after one last happy 'camping' sunrise, we made it back to Auckland, navigating successfully via a public dump station and a petrol station to prepare The Monster for handover.

We've actually mastered the art of doing this dump station thing without argument or confusion now. (Well, when a certain Husband uses technical terms like 'create a siphon' which he expects me to understand and implement, then a certain amount of misunderstanding, leading to confusion, leading to discussion, leading to argument is sure to result.) Pros. We keep talking about 'if we buy a camper van, then...'

And Cat was there, waiting for us, with coffee. #whatadaughter

Off to the first wedding dress appointment. A sweet Thai lady, with her much older husband who acted as interpreter. Some interesting dresses hanging in the garage of her home (this is Auckland, this is NZ, this is warm-enough-in-winter weather), but nothing that really caught our eye apart from the lovely silk of the skirts.

Then the second. A HUGE Chinese run shop - there must have been more than a thousand dresses hanging on the rails. Cat tried a few, all stunning, none exactly what she wanted. Much discussion about what they could do - and I'm sure they could - combining different features of the different dresses she tried, to create what she really wanted.

But, in the end, she might well go back to the pretty,  naturally draping dress she liked first. Whatever she chooses, she will look absolutely stunning. What's not to like about her slim, elegant, beautiful figure?  (I'd say model figure, but she's not stick thin, fortunately, just willowy.)

Last stop on the schedule was lunch at the Skytower. What fun. The restaurant revolves, giving a 360 degree view (of course) of Auckland. We're getting quite good at recognising landmarks now. And the added bonus of Skytower walkers shuffling nervously along the outside walkway just above our heads, and Skytower divers leaping off to freefall (safely held by ropes and harnesses, naturally) to the ground.





I was just happy to look down the  lift shaft through the clear glass of the floor.

Drove back home through another hailstorm...lovely champagne supper with the beautiful and generous Amy who provided it...

...and on to our last day. I have to mention here that Cat was up, with her soon-to-be-sister-in-law Bex, at 6 am to do 'Insanity' - 'just' a Boot Camp type workout which comes with a serious health warning. Then she went to work,  kindly leaving her car for us.

Which was useful, because we had to go and retrieve our coats from The Monster.

Driving around the city no longer seemed quite so intimidating, so we safely negotiated our way around some errands before walking up One Tree Hill - site of a monument to the Maori - and down into lovely Cornwall Park.








Then to Otahuhu, to fetch Cat from work. This is not somewhere tourists usually go - last time we visited, the railway station clerk didn't want to sell us tickets to go there. Great that the office is situated in such a poor area, as CAP serves the poor, helping people escape from the depression and fear of debt. It is always so encouraging visiting the CAP office - such a dedicated, professional, fun-loving bunch of people. And proud - and impressed  - to get such a strong sense of Cat's role there: the NZ branch of the charity seems to have more than doubled in size since she joined and she is obviously a key member of the team. And whilst there we witnessed the almost daily news that someone had become a Christian through CAP's work, the fire bell was rung and the whole office got together to celebrate.



Last meal, last coffee at the airport, last hugs and kisses, last tears...for the moment. So bittersweet leaving a grown up, competent, going-ahead-with-life adult child. All good and healthy, sadness is part of life...

And then back home with Air New Zealand. We had a really good journey, no hiccups and seemingly slightly more comfortable than before, though tiring of course. (Well, what do I expect of a -  in total - 36 hour journey?!)

At Gatwick, the last leg of getting back to Guernsey, jumping on a flight earlier than the one we were booked for took a bit of doing (long queuing up and people who didn’t know what they were doing), but we managed it, and security was quite easy. 

Oddly enough, as we were standing in the queue to actually get on the plane, we overheard a conversation immediately in front of us. The guy had just come from Auckland, the second leg actually on our plane!  He was complaining about the silly transit arrangement in LA - we have to go through passport control and security even though we’re in transit - so we picked up on it.  A youngish Guernsey guy on his first visit home after moving to Auckland 5 years ago - has his own design business there. We just thought it was strange to come all that way with someone (though he got a slightly different Air NZ flight from Auckland and had a longer wait - it took him 3 hours to get through LA security, rather than our own 40 minutes or whatever it was.

So there we are.  Back home. Dear Karyn met us at the airport to take us home and dear Wendy, also there to meet her daughter Rosanne, surprised us with the gift of a box of groceries: so like her dear mum Renee would have done. What an amazing family...

The dog eventually gave us a proper greeting, after seeming slightly confused about who we were after so long...and all was well.

Sunday 9 August 2015

Winding down from Whakatane

Dotterel Point was sooo beautiful that we stayed another night: the only campervan in the car park, though several cars had been and gone with dog walkers or surfers. One man had visited three times, surfing twice, in the course of 8 hours.



We had stayed in many, many lovely spots, but where else could you watch rolling surf pounding the beach and then, turning around, gaze at the calm waters of a shallow harbour only a hundred metres or so behind us?



We were still only half an hour’s drive from Whakatane, so we decided to go back for Sunday morning church.

Good decision. We visited LibertyLife, a church with Presbyterian roots and a Pentecostal outlook. Good music, powerful testimonies, encouragement to carry on living the Christian life: it felt REAL.  And we were, just a little, out of our comfort zone – a type of service we are not used to – no bad thing.

Still, it was exciting to hear about all the many things the church was involved in, but what impressed us most was the calm and personal welcome. |Mike Davies spoke to us as we make our way out, introducing us to others, sharing a little about his life; then, too, Kelvin Deal approached: it was exciting to hear about what God is doing through this vibrant church of, perhaps, a hundred plus people.  And we – complete strangers – were even invited to lunch. (Which would have been lovely, but we had many miles to go before our sleep, so, regretfully, we declined.)

So we made our way back north, towards Auckland. Our destination was, again, Ray’s Rest, a freedom site next to a wetland bird sanctuary, of RAMSAR importance. But first, we had to endure the most severe hailstorm we have seen since leaving Kenya. Fortunately, we were stationary at the time, because the hail piled up on the windscreen like snow and left the roads covered in white.




It was an interesting challenge afterwards to negotiate the Karangahake Gorge...


And so, here we are, back, in Ray’s Rest. Auckland tomorrow, and the end of ‘camping’ adventures. But looking forward to Yet More Wedding Planning – caterers have submitted their quote and everything is go...

Just negotiating on the bride price now. We’ve asked to be paid in sheep, not goats; have the offer of some Herefords instead, but, actually, it would really have to be Guernseys....

Friday 7 August 2015

Dawn at Rotorua...Dusk at Dotterell point

My heart is steadfast, O God! I will sing and make melody with all my being.
Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn!
I WILL give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples’ I WILL sing praises to you AMONG THE NATIONS.                                                                                                                                                                Psalm 108





Dawn at Hot Water Beach, Rotorua. Unwittingly, we had chosen a campsite next to the historic Maori village and the lakeside. The dawn over the lake was heralded by black swans and red-billed gulls, with the odd scaup, shag and puheko.

Then off to Dotterell Point, a long spit of land sheltering one of the many little harbours which make up the Bay of Plenty coastline.  Plenty of dotterels – a flock of banded dotterels and several pairs of New Zealand dotterel.

And, apparently, the Variable Oystercatcher – which has seemed ubiquitous to us as we have journeyed down North Island’s east coast – is a rare species....

An added bonus: we’d been here just a few minutes when a young seal lolloped painfully across the grass in front of us. He kept stopping, lifting his head, before dragging himself into the dunes.  He looked thin...





....but we were pleased to see that he had taken himself off by the next morning. Another beach walk, sand stretching further than the eye could see...another sunrise...surfers already out at the break, having walked across the shallow estuary at low tide, then out on the sandbanks.

After days of intermittent rain, the sun shone brightly in a clear sky, glinting on the puddles. A Caspian Tern (taranui, an uncommon native gull – though found frequently along the east coast) flew in to the end of the spit. It seemed as if everything breathed a sigh of relief after the windy wet storms...




Thursday 6 August 2015

Rotorua

Well, SOMEONE didn’t particularly want to go to Rotorua. SOMEONE had ‘been there, done that’ when it came to sulphurous springs, bubbling mud and hot pools. SOMEONE wasn’t interested in going to the most popular tourist spot in New Zealand.

Actually, I had to agree with him on the last bit. Touristy sights and sites have never been our thing – were we the only family to visit Florida and NOT go to Disney World? (Though Sea World and Kennedy Space Centre did tick lots of boxes for us...)

However, the sight – and smell – of the earth’s volcanic power at my feet absolutely fascinates me. So I dragged the Rotorua Grinch, in full mental grumble mode, all the way to the shores of the lake. Shock, horror, no freedom camping: we actually had to stay in a ‘proper’ holiday park.

Pluses:
  • It’s winter – there were two other vans camping nearby, but otherwise it was deserted.
  • Electricity. Unlimited hot water, easy laptop charging, good light at night, quick cups of tea.
  • Hot pools for our use on the campsite. A boiling mud pool to gape at. Proximity to historic Rotorua and the lake.And, to be fair, The Grinch kept his mutterings, mostly, to himself.
  • No one doing ‘doughnuts’ or rocking up in the early hours for possibly nefarious purposes.
First visit on bikes (5 minutes away) was Ohinemutu village, original Maori Rotorua, on the shores of the lake. Many magnificently carved buildings, a beautiful Anglican church and steam hissing in almost every backyard.

St Faith's at Ohinemutu


St Faith's
Second visit: Sulphur Bay. Still cycling along the lake shore, past the paddle steamer, dozens of black swans and more New Zealand scaup (black teal) than I could ever imagine seeing. Huge flocks, all calling to each other with un-ducklike whistles or diving, synchronised swimming style, underwater together.



More steam, more sinter (rocky) terraces and landscapes, more mud pools. The Grinch conceded that it was now beginning to look like Lake Bogoria, our ultimate favourite in getaways from our Kenyan days. Therefore, the day was beginning to get a little better.

Third visit: Kuirau Park. City park with car parks, grass, playgrounds, ponds... and steaming pools, gushing hot fountains, sinter terraces and bubbling mud holes. Incredible.












I don’t care what the Grinch says about sulphurous fumes or ‘seen it before’ geysers. I LOVE Rotorua. I love the unexpectedness, the power of the earth, the majesty of creation. God is amazing!

And the Grinch my dear husband, considering he really, really wasn’t keen at all on doing all this, nevertheless indulged my wishes very, very graciously. So I shall add here something I saw on facebook this morning:

In a brief conversation, a man asked a woman he was pursuing the question: 'What kind of man are you looking for?' She sat quietly for a moment before looking him in the eye and asking, 'Do you really want to know?' Reluctantly, he said, 'Yes.

She began to expound, 'As a woman in this day and age, I am in a position to ask a man what can you do for me that I can't do fsor myself? I pay my own bills. I take care of my household without the help of any man... or woman for that matter. I am in the position to ask, 'What can you bring to the table?'

The man looked at her. Clearly he thought that she was referring to money. She quickly corrected his thought and stated, 'I am not referring to money. I need something more. I need a man who is striving for excellence in every aspect of life.

'I need someone who is striving for excellence mentally because I need conversation and mental stimulation. I don't need a simple-minded man.

I need someone who is striving for excellence spiritually because I don't need to be unequally yoked...believers mixed with unbelievers is a recipe for disaster.

I need a man who is striving for excellence financially because I don't need a financial burden.

I need someone who is sensitive enough to understand what I go through as a woman, but strong enough to keep me grounded.

I need someone who has integrity in dealing with relationships. Lies and game-playing are not my idea of a strong man.

I need a man who is family-oriented. One who can be the leader, priest and provider to the lives entrusted to him by God.

I need someone whom I can respect. In order to be submissive, I must respect him. I cannot be submissive to a man who isn't taking care of his business. I have no problem being submissive...he just has to be worthy.

And by the way, I am not looking for him...He will find me. He will recognize himself in me. He may not be able to explain the connection, but he will always be drawn to me. God made woman to be a help-mate for man. I can't help a man if he can't help himself.”


I’m blessed to have been married to one like this for over 30 years.